
Qass_ 
Book- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



THE STORY OF THE 
SUBMARINE 




L^r ". i:.: 



THE STORY OF 
THE SUBMARINE 



BY 

FARNHAM BISHOP 

Author of "Panama, Past and Present," etc. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS 
AND DRAWINGS 



ICTaa^S 




SWv^v««8 



NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1916 



.3 55 



Copyright, 191 6, by 
The Century Co. 



Published, February, igi6 



FEB 24 19J6 

©CLA420.888 



To 
MY MOTHER 



PREFACE 

This book has been written for the nontechnical reader 
— for the man or boy who is interested in submarines 
and torpedoes, and would like to know something about 
the men who invented these things and how they came 
to do it. Much has been omitted that I should have 
liked to have put in, for this is a small book and the 
story of the submarine is much longer than most people 
realize. It is perhaps astonishing to think of the launch- 
ing of an underseaboat in the year the Pilgrims landed 
at Plymouth Rock, or George Washington watching his 
submarine attack the British fleet in 1776. But are 
these things as astonishing as the thought of European 
soldiers wearing steel helmets and fighting with cross- 
bows and catapults in 191 6? 

The chapter on " A Trip in a Modern Submarine " is 
purely imaginative. There is no such boat in our sub- 
marine flotilla as the X-4. We ought to have plenty of 
big, fast, sea-going submarines, with plenty of big, fast 
sea-planes and battle-cruisers, so that if an invading army 
ever starts for this country we can meet it and smash it 
while it is cooped up on transports somewhere in mid- 
ocean. There, and not in shallow, off-shore waters, 
cumbered with nets and mines, is the true battlefield of 
the submarine. 

The last part of this book has a broken-off and frag- 



Preface 

mentary appearance. This is almost unavoidable at a 
time when writing history is like trying to make a statue 
of a moving-picture. I have tried to do justice to both 
sides in the present war. 

I wish to express my thanks to those whose kindness 
and courtesy have made it possible for me to write this 
book. To Mr. Kelby, Librarian of the New York His- 
torical Society, I am indebted for much information about 
BushnelFs Turtle, and to Mrs. Daniel Whitney, of Ger- 
mantown, Pa., a descendant of Ezra Lee, for the por- 
trait of her intrepid ancestor. Both the Electric Boat 
Company and Mr. Simon Lake have supplied me most 
generously with information and pictures. The Bureau 
of Construction, United States Navy, E. P. Dutton & 
Company, publishers of Mr. Alan H. Burgoyne's " Sub- 
marine Navigation Past and Present " ; the American 
Magazine, Flying, International Marine Engineering, the 
Scientific American, and the Nezv York Sun have cheer- 
fully given permission for the reproduction of many pic- 
tures of which they hold the copyright. Albert Frank 
& Company have given the cut of the advertisement of 
the last sailing of the Lusitania. Special thanks are due 
to Mr. A. Russell Bond, Associate Editor of the Scientific 
American, for expert advice and suggestion. 

Some well-known pictures of submarines are herein 
credited for the first time to the man who made them: 
Captain Francis M. Barber, U. S. N. (retired). This 
officer published a little pink-backed pamphlet on sub- 
marine boats — the first book devoted exclusively to this 
subject — in 1875. 

" The last time I heard of that pink pamphlet/' writes 



Preface 

Captain Barber from Washington, " was when I was 
Naval Attache at Berlin in 1898. Admiral von Tirpitz 
was then head of the Torpedo Bureau in the Navy De- 
partment, and he was good enough to say that it was the 
foundation of his studies — and look what we have now 
in the terrible German production. " 

Farnham Bishop. 
New York, 
January, 19 16. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I In the Beginning 3 

II David Bushnell's " Turtle " 12 

III Robert Fulton's " Nautilus " 26 

IV Submarines in the Civil War 36 

V The Whitehead Torpedo 43 

VI Freaks and Failures 56 

VII John P. Holland 69 

VIII The Lake Submarines 82 

IX A Trip in a Modern Submarine .... 100 

X Accidents and Safety Devices 124 

XI Mines 139 

XII The Submarine in Action 156 

XIII The Submarine Blockade 177 

XIV The Submarine and Neutrals 189 

Index 207 



List of Illustrations 



PAGE 



U. S. Submarine M-i Frontispiece 

Cornelius Van Drebel 5 

The Rotterdam Boat 8 

Symons's Submarine 10 

The Submarine of 1776 . . 13 

The Best-known Picture of Bushnell's Turtle . . .16 

Another Idea of Bushnell's Turtle 19 

Ezra Lee . 21 

The Nautilus Invented by Robert Fulton .... 28 

Destruction of the Dorothea 33 

Views of a Confederate David ^y 

C. S. S. Hundley 38 

Cross-section of a Whitehead Torpedo 51 

Davis Gun-torpedo After Discharge, Showing Eight- 
inch Gun Forward of Air-flask 53 

Effect of Davis Gun-torpedo on a Specially-con- 
structed Target . 54 

The Intelligent Whale . 58 

Le Plongeur 59 

Steam Submarine Nordenfeldt II, at Constantinople, 

1887 . 62 

Bauer's Submarine Concert, Cronstadt Harbor, 1855 • 65 

ApostolofFs Proposed Submarine 67 

The Holland No. 1 70 



xin 



xiv List of Illustrations 

PAGE 

The Fenian Ram 73 

U. S. S. Holland, in Drydock with the Russian Battle- 
ship Retvizan yy 

John P. Holland 80 

Lake 1893 Design as Submitted to the U. S. Navy 

Department ; . . 83 

The Argonaut Junior 84 

Argonaut as Originally Built 87 

Argonaut as Rebuilt 90 

The Rebuilt Argonaut, Showing Pipe-masts and Ship- 
shaped Superstructure 93 

Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Sub- 
marine 94 

Cross-section of the Protector 97 

Mr. Simon Lake 98 

U. S. Submarine E-2 101 

A Submarine Cruiser, or Fleet Submarine (Lake Type) 105 
Auxiliary Switchboard and Electric Cook-stove, in a 

U. S. Submarine 107 

Forward Deck of a U. S. Submarine, in Cruising Trim 109 

Same, Preparing to Submerge no 

Depth-control Station, U. S. Submarine 113 

Cross-section of a Periscope 114 

Forward Torpedo-compartment, U. S. Submarine . .117 
Fessenden Oscillator Outside the Hull of a Ship . . 120 
Professor Fessenden Receiving a Message Sent 
Through Several Miles of Sea-water by His " Oscil- 
lator " 121 

Side-elevation of a Modern Submarine 127 

One Type of Safety- jacket 131 



List of Illustrations xv 



PAGE 



The Vulcan Salvaging the C/-J 134 

Fulton's Anchored Torpedoes 140 

Sinking of the U. S. S. Tecumseh, by a Confederate 

Mine, in Mobile Bay 143 

A Confederate " Keg-torpedo " . 144 

First Warship Destroyed by a Mine 145 

A Confederate " Buoyant Torpedo " or Contact-mine . 146 

Modern Contact-mine 150 

U. S. Mine-planter San Francisco 153 

English Submarine Rescuing English Sailors . . .157 
Engagement Between the Birmingham and the U-15 . 159 
Sinking of the Aboukir, Cressy, and Hogue .... 163 
Tiny Target Afforded by Periscopes in Rough Weather 167 
Photograph of a Submarine, Twenty Feet Below the 

Surface, Taken from the Aeroplane, Whose Shadow 

Is Shown in the Picture 173 

German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman . 182 
British Submarine, Showing One Type of Disappearing 

Deck-gun Now in Use 190 



THE STORY OF THE 
SUBMARINE 



THE STORY OF THE 
SUBMARINE 

CHAPTER I 

IN THE BEGINNING 

IF you had been in London in the year 1624, and had 
gone to the theater to see " The Staple of News," 
a new and very dull comedy by Shakespeare's friend Ben 
Jonson, you would have heard, in act in, scene i, the 
following dialogue about submarines : 

Thomas 

They write hear one Cornelius' son 
Hath made the Hollanders an invisible eel 
To swim the haven at Dunkirk and sink all 
The shipping there. 

Pennyboy 

But how is 't done ? 

Grabal 
I '11 show you, sir, 
It is an automa, runs under water 
With a snug nose, and has a nimble tail 
Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles 
Betwixt the costs of a ship and sinks it straight. 

3 



4 The Story of the Submarine 

Pennyboy 
Whence have you this news ? 

Fitton 

From a right hand I assure you. 

The eel-boats here, that lie before Queen-hythe 

Came out of Holland. 

Pennyboy 

A most brave device 
To murder their flat bottoms. 

The idea of submarine navigation is much older than 
1624. Crude diving bells, and primitive leather diving 
helmets, with bladders to keep the upper end of the air 
tube afloat on the surface of the water, were used as early 
as the fourteenth century. William Bourne, an English- 
man who published a book on " Inventions or Devices " 
in 1578, suggested the military value of a boat that could 
be sailed just below the surface of the water, with a 
hollow mast for a ventilator. John Napier, Laird of 
Merchiston, the great Scotch mathematician who invented 
logarithms, wrote in 1596 about his proposed "Devices 
of sailing under the water, with divers other devices and 
stratagems for the burning of enemies." 

But the first man actually to build and navigate a sub- 
marine was a Dutchman: the learned Doctor Cornelius 
Van Drebel. 1 He was " a native of Alkmaar, a very 
fair and handsome man, and of very gentle manners." 
Both his pleasing personality and his knowledge of sci- 

iAlso spelled Van Drebbel, Drebell, Dreble, and Trebel. He is 
the man Ben Jonson calls " Cornelius' son." 



In the Beginning 



ence — which caused many to suspect him of being a 
magician — made the Netherlander an honored guest 
at the court of his most pedantic Majesty, King James I 
of England. 

Van Drebel was 
walking along the 
banks of the 
Thames, one pleas- 
ant evening in the 
year 1620, when he 
" noticed some sail- 
ors dragging behind 
their barques baskets 
full of fish; he saw 
that the barques were 
weighed down in the 
water, but that they 
rose a little when the 
baskets allowed the 
ropes which held 
them to slacken a 
little. The idea oc- 
curred to him that a 
ship could be held 
under water by a 
somewhat similar method and could be propelled by oars 
and poles. " 2 

Lodged by the king in Eltham Palace, and supplied 
with funds from the royal treasury, Van Drebel designed 
and built three submarine boats, between 1620 and 1624. 

2 Harsdoffer. 




Cornelius Van Drebel. 



Reproduced from " 
Past and Present " 
by permission of E. 



Submarine Navigation, 
by Alan H. Burgoyne, 
P. Dutton & Company. 



6 The Story of the Submarine 

They were simply large wooden rowboats, decked over 
and made water-tight by a covering of thick, well- 
greased leather. Harsdoffer, a chronicler of the period, 
declared that 

" King James himself journeyed in one of them on 
the Thames. There were on this occasion twelve rowers 
besides the passengers, and the vessel during several 
hours was kept at a depth of twelve to fifteen feet below 
the surface/' 

Another contemporary historian, Cornelius Van der 
Wonde, of Van Drebel's home town, said of him: 

" He built a ship in which one could row and navigate 
under water from Westminster to Greenwich, the distance 
of two Dutch miles; even five or six miles or as far as 
one pleased. In this boat a person could see under the 
surface of the water and without candle-light, as much 
as he needed to read in the Bible or any other book. Not 
long ago this remarkable ship was yet to be seen lying in 
the Thames or London river." 

The glow of phosphorescent bodies, suggested by the 
monk Mersenne for illuminating the interior of a sub- 
marine, later in the seventeenth century and actually so 
used by Bushnell in the eighteenth, might have furnished 
sufficient light for Bible- and compass-reading on this 
voyage. But how did King James — the first and last 
monarch to venture on an underwater voyage — the other 
passengers, and the twelve rowers get enough air? 

" That deservedly Famous Mechanician and Chymist, 
Cornelius Drebell . . . conceived, that 't is not only the 
whole body of the air but a certain Quintessence (as 
Chymists speake) or spirituous part that makes it fit for 



In the Beginning 7 

respiration ... so that (for aught I could gather) be- 
sides the Mechanicall contrivance of his vessel he had a 
Chvmicall liquor, which he accounted the chief secret 
of his Submarine Navigation. For when from time to 
time he perceived that the finer and purer part of the air 
was consumed or over-clogged by the respiration and 
steames of those that went in his ship, he would, by 
unstopping a vessel full of liquor speedily restore to the 
troubled air such a proportion of vital parts as would 
make it again for a good while fit for Respiration." 3 

Did Van Drebel anticipate by one hundred and fifty 
years the discovery of oxygen: the life-giving " Quintes- 
sence " of air? Even if he did, it is incredible that he 
should have found a liquid, utterly unknown to modern 
chemistry, capable of giving off that gas so freely that 
a few gallons would restore the oxygen to a confined body 
of air as fast as fifteen or twenty men could consume it 
by breathing. Perhaps his " Chymicall liquor " instead 
of producing oxygen directly, increased the proportion 
of it in the atmosphere by absorbing the carbonic acid 
gas. 

The Abbe de Haute feullie, who wrote in 1680 on 
" Methods of breathing under water," made the follow- 
ing shrewd guess at the nature of the apparatus : 

" Drebel's secret was probably the machine which I 
had imagined, consisting of a bellows with two valves 
and two tubes resting on the surface of the water, the one 
bringing dow^n air and the other sending it back. By 
speaking of a volatile essence which restored the nitrous 

3 " New Experiments touching the Spring of the Air and its Ef- 
fects," by Robert Boyle, Oxford, 1662, p. 188. 



8 



The Story of the Submarine 



parts consumed by respiration, Drebel evidently wished 
to disguise his invention and prevent others from finding 
out its real nature/' 

It is a very great pity that we know no more about 
these earliest submarines. Cornelius Van Drebel died 
in 1634, at the age of sixty-two, without leaving any 
written notes or oral descriptions. We must not think 
too hardly of this inventor of three centuries ago, un- 
guarded by patent laws, for making a mystery of his 




Courtesy of the Scientific American, 



The Rotterdam Boat. 



discoveries. He had to be a showman as well as a scien- 
tist, or his noble patrons would have lost all interest in 
his " ingenious machines," and mystery is half of the 
showman's game. Besides his " eel-boats," Van Drebel 
is said to have invented a wonderful globe with which 
he imitated perpetual motion and illustrated the course 
of the sun, moon, and stars; an incubator, a refrigerator, 
" Virginals that played of themselves," and other marvels 
too numerous to mention. Half scientist, half charlatan, 



In the Beginning 9 

wholly medieval in appearance, with his long furred gown 
and long, fair beard, Cornelius Van Drebel marches pic- 
turesquely at the head of the procession of inventors who 
have made possible the modern submarine. 

Eighteen years after Van Drebel's death, a Frenchman 
named Le Son built a submarine at Rotterdam. This 
craft, which is usually referred to as the Rotterdam 
Boat, was 72 feet long, 12 feet high, and of 8 foot beam. 
It was built of wood, with sharply tapering ends, and had 
a superstructure whose sloping sides were designed to 
deflect cannon balls that might be fired at the boat while 
traveling on the surface, while iron-shod legs protected 
the hull when resting on the sea bottom. A single paddle- 
wheel amidships was to propel the boat, — just how, the 
inventor never revealed. Like so many other sub- 
marines, the Rotterdam Boat was built primarily to be 
used against the British fleet. But it failed to interest 
either the Dutch or French minister of marine, and never 
went into action. 

The earliest known contemporary picture of a sub- 
marine vessel appeared in the " Gentleman's Magazine/' 
in 1747. It showed a cross section of an underwater 
boat built and navigated on the Thames by one Symons. 
This was a decked-over row-boat, propelled by four pairs 
of oars working in water-tight joints of greased leather. 
To submerge his vessel, Symons admitted water into a 
number of large leather bottles, placed inside the hull 
with their open mouth passing through holes in the bot- 
tom. When he wished to rise, he would squeeze out 
the water with a lever and bind up the neck of each 
emptied bottle with string. This ingenious device was 



10 The Story of the Submarine 

not original with Mr. Symons, but was invented by a 
Frenchman named Borelli in 1680. 

Submarine navigation was a century and a half old 
before it claimed its first victim. J. Day, an English 
mechanic, rebuilt a small boat so that he was able to 
submerge it in thirty feet of water, with himself on 
board, and remain there for twenty-four hours with no 
ill effect. At the end of this time, Day rose to the sur- 
face, absolutely certain of his ability to repeat the ex- 




Symons's Submarine. 

periment at any depth. But how could he turn this to 
practical account? 

It was an age of betting, when gentlemen could always 
be found to risk money on any wager, however fan- 
tastic. Day found a financial backer in a Mr. Blake, who 
advanced him the money to buy a fifty-ton sloop and 
fit it with a strong water-tight compartment amidships. 
Ten tons of ballast were placed in the hold and twenty 
more hung outside the hull by four iron rods passing 
through the passenger's compartment. When the rest 



In the Beginning ll 

of the boat was filled with water, it would sink to the 
bottom, to rise again when the man inside released the 
twenty tons of outer ballast. 

Shut in the water-tight compartment of this boat, Day 
sank to the bottom of Plymouth Harbor, at 2 p.m., Tues- 
day, June 28, 1774, to decide a bet that he could remain 
twelve hours at a depth of twenty-two fathoms (132 
feet). When, at the expiration of this time, the sub- 
marine failed to reappear, Mr. Blake called on the cap- 
tain of a near-by frigate for help. Bluejackets from the 
warship and workmen from the dockyard were set to 
work immediately to grapple for the sunken craft and 
raise her to the surface, but to no avail. The great 
pressure of water at that depth — 150 feet is the limit 
of safety for many modern submarines — must have 
crushed in the walls of the water-tight compartment with- 
out giving Day time enough to release the outer ballast 
and rise to safety. 



CHAPTER II 



IN the first week of September, 1776, the American 
army defending New York still held Manhattan Is- 
land, but nothing more. Hastily improvised, badly 
equipped, and w T orse disciplined, it had been easily de- 
feated by a superior invading force of British regulars 
and German mercenaries in the battle of Long Island. 
Brooklyn had fallen; from Montauk Point to the East 
River, all was the enemy's country. Staten Island, too, 
was an armed and hostile land. After the fall of the 
forts on both sides of the Narrows, the British fleet 
had entered the Upper Bay, and even landed marines and 
infantry on Governor's Island. Grimly guarding the 
crowded transports, the ship-of-the-line Asia and the 
frigate Eagle lay a little above Staten Island, with their 
broadsides trained on the doomed city. 

In the mouth of the North River, not a biscuit-toss 
from the Battery, floated the brass conning-tower of an 
American submarine. 

It was the only submarine in the world and its in- 
ventor called it the Turtle. He called it that because it 
looked like one : a turtle floating with its tail down and 
a conning-tower for a head. It has also been compared 
to a modern soldier's canteen with an extra-large mouth- 
piece, or a hardshell clam wearing a silk hat. It was 

12 



David Bushnell's " Turtle ' 



13 



deeper than it was long and not much longer than it 
was broad. It had no periscope, torpedo tubes, or cage 
of white mice. But the Turtle was a submarine, for all 
that. 

Its inventor was a Connecticut Yankee, Mr. David 
Bushnell, later Captain 
Bushnell of the corps 
of sappers and miners 
and in the opinion of 
his Excellency General 
Washington " a man 
of great mechanical 
powers, fertile in in- 
vention and master of 
execution. ' ' Bushnell 
was born in Saybrook 
and educated at Yale, 
w T here he graduated 
with the class of 1775. 
During his four years 
as an undergraduate, 
he spent most of his 
spare time solving the 
problem of exploding 
gunpowder under wa- 
ter. A water-tight case would keep his powder dry, but 
how could he get a spark inside to explode it ? Percus- 
sion caps had not yet been invented, but Bushnell took the 
flintlock from a musket and had it snapped by clockwork 
that could be wound up and set for any desired length 
of time. 




The Submarine of 1776. 
(As described by its operator.) 



14 The Story of the Submarine 

" The first experiment I made," wrote Bushnell in a 
letter to Thomas Jefferson when the latter was American 
minister to France in 1789, " was with about 2 ounces 
of powder, which I exploded 4 feet under water, to prove 
to some of the first personages in Connecticut that 
powder would take fire under water. 

" The second experiment was made with 2 lb. of 
powder enclosed in a wooden bottle and fixed under a 
hogshead, with a 2-inch oak plank between the hqgs- 
head and the powder. The hogshead was loaded with 
stones as deep as it could swim; a wooden pipe, descend- 
ing through the lower head of the hogshead and through 
the plank into the bottle, was primed with powder. A 
match put to the priming exploded the powder, which 
produced a very great effect, rending the plank into 
pieces, demolishing the hogshead, and casting the stones 
and the ruins of the hogshead, with a body of water, 
many feet into the air, to the astonishment of the spec- 
tators. This experiment was likewise made for the sat- 
isfaction of the gentlemen above mentioned." 

Governor Trumbull of Connecticut was among the 
" first personages " present at these experiments, which 
so impressed him and his council that they appropriated 
enough money for Bushnell to build the Turtle. The 
Nutmeg State was thus the first " world-power " to have 
a submarine in its navy. 1 

The hull of the Turtle was not made of copper, as is 
sometimes stated, but was " built of oak, in the strongest 

1 The only submarine built before this for military purposes, the 
Rotterdam Boat, remained private property, and King James's " eel- 
boats " were merely pleasure craft. 



David Bushnell's " Turtle " 15 

manner possible, corked and tarred. " 2 The conning- 
tower was of brass and also served as a hatch-cover. 
The hatchway was barely big enough for the one man 
who made up the entire crew to squeeze through. Once 
inside, the operator could screw the cover down tight, 
and look out through " three round doors, one directly 
in front and one on each side, large enough to put the 
hand through. When open they admitted fresh air." 
On top of the conning-tower were two air-pipes " so con- 
structed that they shut themselves whenever the water 
rose near their tops, so that no water could enter through 
them and opened themselves immediately after they rose 
above the water. 

' The vessel was chiefly ballasted with lead fixed to its 
bottom; when this was not sufficient a quantity was 
placed within, more or less according to the weight of 
the operator; its ballast made it so stiff that there was 
no danger of oversetting. The vessel, with all its ap- 
pendages and the operator, was of sufficient weight to set- 
tle it very low in the water. About 200 lb. of lead at 
the bottom for ballast could be let down 40 or 50 feet 
below the vessel; this enabled the operator to rise in- 
stantly to the surface of the water in case of accident." 

The operator sat on an oaken brace that kept the two 
sides of the boat from being crushed in by the water- 
pressure, and did things with his hands and feet. He 
must have been as busy as a cathedral organist on Easter 
morning. With one foot he opened a brass valve that let 

2 Sergeant Ezra Lee's letter to Gen. David Humphreys, written in 
1815. Published in the " Magazine of American History/' Vol. 29, 
p. 261. 



16 The Story of the Submarine 

water into the ballast tanks, with the other he worked 
a force pump to drive it out. When he had reached an 
approximate equilibrium, he could move the submarine 
up or down, or hold it at any desired depth, by cranking 
a small vertical-acting propellor placed just forward of 
the conning-tower on the deck above. Before him was 
the crank of another propellor, or rather tractor, for it 
drew, not pushed, the vessel forward. Behind him was 
the rudder, which the operator controlled with a long 
curved tiller stuck under one arm. 




The Best-known Picture of Bushnell's Turtle. 
Drawn by Lieutenant F. M. Barber, U. S. N., in 1875. 



Bushnell, in his letter to Jefferson, calls each of these 
propellors " an oar, formed upon the principle of the 
screw," and the best-known picture of the Turtle shows 
a bearded gentleman in nineteenth-century clothes boring 
his way through the water with two big gimlets. But 
Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Connecticut Line, who did the 
actual operating, described the submarine's fonvard pro- 
pellor (he makes no mention of the other) as having two 
wooden blades or " oars, of about 12 inches in length 
and 4 or 5 in width, shaped like the arms of a windmill." 



David Bushnell's " Turtle " 17 

Except in size, this device must have looked very 
much like the wooden-bladed tractor of a modern aero- 
plane. 

" These oars," noted Judge Griswold on the letter 
before forwarding it to General Humphrey, " were fixed 
on the end of a shaft like windmill arms projected out 
forward, and turned at right angles with the course of 
the machine ; and upon the same principles that wind-mill 
arms are turned by the wind, these oars, when put in 
motion as the writer describes, draw the machine slowly 
after it. This moving power is small, and every atten- 
dant circumstance must cooperate with it to answer the 
purpose — calm waters and no current." 

" With hard labor," said Lee, " the machine might be 
impelled at the rate of ' 3 nots ' an hour for a short 
time." 

Sergeant Lee volunteered " to learn the w r ays and mys- 
tery of this new machine " because the original operator, 
Bushnell's brother, " was taken sick in the campaign of 
1776 at New York before he had an opportunity to make 
use of his skill, and never recovered his health sufficiently 
afterwards." While Lee was still struggling with the 
" mystery " in practice trips on Long Island Sound, the 
British fleet entered New York Harbor. The submarine 
was at once hurried to New Rochelle, carted overland to 
the Hudson, and towed down to the city. 

At slack tide on the first calm night after his arrival, 
Lee screwed down the conning-tower of the Turtle above 
his head and set out to attack the British fleet. 4 Two 

4 " General Washington and his associates in the secret took their 
stations upon a house in Broadway, anxiously awaiting the result." 



18 The Story of the Submarine 

whaleboats towed him as near as they dared and then 
cast off. Running awash, with not more than six or 
seven inches of the conning-tower exposed, the submarine 
crept, silent and unseen, down the bay and up under the 
towering stern of his Britannic Majesty's 64-gun frigate 
Eagle. 

" When I rowed under the stern of the ship/' wrote 
Sergeant Lee in after years, " I could see the men on 
deck and hear them talk. I then shut down all the 
doors, sunk down and came under the bottom of the 
ship." 

Up through the top of the submarine ran a long sharp 
gimlet, not for boring a hole through the bottom of a 
ship, but to be screwed into the wooden hull and left there, 
to serve as an anchor for a mine. Tied to the screw and 
carried on the after-deck of the Turtle was an egg-shaped 
" magazine," made of two hollowed-out pieces of oak 
and containing one hundred and fifty pounds of gun- 
powder, with a clockwork time-fuse that would begin 
to run as soon as the operator cast off the magazine after 
making fast the screw. Everything seemed ready for 
Sergeant Lee to anticipate Lieutenant Commander Von 
Weddigen by one hundred and thirty-eight years. 

But no matter how hard the strong-wristed sergeant 
turned the handle, he could not drive the screw into the 
frigate's hull. The Eagle was copper-sheathed ! 5 

" I pulled along to try another place," said Lee, " but 
deviated a little to one side and immediately rose with 

From Ezra Lee's obituary, New York " Commercial Advertiser," 
November 15, 1821. 

5 According to Bushnell, the screw struck an iron bar securing the 
rudder. 



David Bushnell's " Turtle " 



19 



great velocity and came above the surface 2 or 3 feet, 
between the ship and the daylight, then sunk again like 
a porpoise. I hove about to try again, but on further 
thought I gave out, knowing that as soon as it was light 
the ships' boats would be rowing in all directions, and I 
thought the best generalship was to retreat as fast as I 
could, as I had 4 miles to go before passing Governor's 
Island. So I jogg'd on as fast as I could.'' 

To enable him to steer a course when submerged, Lee 




Another Idea of Bushnell's Turtle. 



had before him a compass, most ingeniously illuminated 
with phosphorescent pieces of rotten wood. But for 
some reason this proved to be of no use. 

" I was obliged to rise up every few minutes to see 
that I sailed in the right direction, and for this purpose 
keeping the machine on the surface of the water and the 
doors open. I was much afraid of getting aground on 
the island, as the tide of the flood set on the north point. 

" While on my passage up to the city, my course, owing 
to the above circumstances, was very crooked and zig- 



20 The Story of the Submarine 

zag, and the enemy's attention was drawn towards me 
from Governor's Island. When I was abreast of the 
fort on the island, 3 or 400 men got upon the parapet to 
observe me ; at length a number came down to the shore, 
shoved off a 12 oar'd barge with 5 or 6 sitters and pulled 
for me. I eyed them, and when they had got within 50 
or 60 yards of me I let loose the magazine in hopes that 
if they should take me they would likewise pick up the 
magazine, and then we should all be blown up together. 
But as kind Providence would have it, they took fright 
and returned to the island to my infinite joy. I then 
weathered the island, and our people seeing me, came off 
with a whaleboat and towed me in. The magazine, after 
getting a little past the island, went off with a tremendous 
explosion, throwing up large bodies of water to an im- 
mense height." 

A few days afterwards, the British forces landed on 
Manhattan Island at what is now the foot of East Thirty- 
fourth Street, and Washington's army hastily withdrew 
to the Harlem Heights, above One Hundred and Twenty- 
fifth Street. A British frigate sailed up the Hudson and 
anchored off Bloomingdale, or between Seventy-second 
and One Hundred and Tenth Streets, in the same waters 
where our Atlantic fleet lies whenever it comes to town. 
Here Sergeant Lee in the Turtle made two more attempts. 
But the first time he was discovered by the watch, and 
when he approached again, submerged, the phosphorus- 
painted cork that served as an indicator in his crude but 
ingenious depth-gage, got caught and deceived him so 
that he dived completely under the warship without touch- 
ing her. Shortly after this, the frigate came up the river, 




Ezra Lee. 

Born at Lyme, Conn., Jan. 21, 1749, 

Died at Lyme, Conn., Oct. 29, 182 1. 

From original painting in possession of his descendant, Mrs. Daniel 
Whitney, 51 17 Pulaski Avenue, Germantown, Pa. 



21 



22 The Story of the Submarine 

overhauled the sloop on which the Turtle was being trans- 
ported, and sent it to the bottom, submarine and all. 

" Though I afterwards recovered the vessel," Bushnell 
wrote to Jefferson, " I found it impossible at that time 
to prosecute the design any further. I had been in a bad 
state of health from the beginning of my undertaking, 
and was now very unwell ; the situation of public affairs 
was such that I despaired of obtaining the public atten- 
tion and the assistance necessary. I was unable to sup- 
port myself and the persons I must have employed had I 
proceeded. Besides, I found it absolutely necessary that 
the operators should acquire more skill in the manage- 
ment of the vessel before I could expect success, which 
would have taken up some time, and no small additional 
expense. I therefore gave over the pursuit for that time 
and waited for a more favorable opportunity, which never 
arrived. 

" In the year 1777 I made an attempt from a whale- 
boat against the Cerberus frigate, then lying at anchor 
between Connecticut River and New London, by drawing 
a machine against her side by means of a line. The ma- 
chine was loaded with powder, to be exploded by a gun- 
lock, which was to be unpinioned by an apparatus to be 
turned by being brought alongside of the frigate. This 
machine fell in with a schooner at anchor astern of the 
frigate, and concealed from my sight. By some means 
or other it was fired, and demolished the schooner and 
three men, and blew the only one left alive overboard, 
who was taken up very much hurt. 6 

6 This survivor was examined by the captain of the Cerberus, who 



David Bushnell's " Turtle " 23 

" After this I fixed several kegs under water, charged 
with powder, to explode upon touching anything as they 
floated along with the tide. I set them afloat in the 
Delaware, above the English shipping at Philadelphia, in 
December, 1777. I was unacquainted with the river, and 
obliged to depend upon a gentleman very imperfectly 
acquainted with that part of it, as I afterwards found. 
We went as near the shipping as we durst venture ; I be- 
lieve the darkness of the night greatly deceived him, as 
it did me. We set them adrift to fall with the ebb upon 
the shipping. Had we been within sixty rods I believe 
they must have fallen in with them immediately, as I 
designed; but, as I afterwards found, they were set adrift 
much too far distant, and did not arrive until, after being 
detained some time by frost, they advanced in the day- 
time in a dispersed situation and under great disadvan- 
tages. One of them blew up a boat with several persons 
in it who imprudently handled it too freely, and thus gave 
the British the alarm which brought on the battle of the 
kegs." 

The agitated redcoats lined the banks and blazed away 
at every bit of drifting wreckage in the river, as de- 
scribed by a sarcastic Revolutionary poet in " The Battle 
of the Kegs." 

Gallants attend, and hear a friend 
Troll forth harmonious ditty, 
Strange things I '11 tell that once befell 
In Philadelphia city. 

reported that the schooner's crew had drawn the machine on board 
and by rashly tampering with its mechanism caused it to explode. 



24 The Story of the Submarine 

'Twas early day, as poets say, 
Just as the sun was rising, 
A soldier stood on a log of wood 
And saw a thing surprising. 

As in amaze he stood to gaze, 
The truth can't be denied, sir, 
He spied a score of kegs or more 
Come floating down the tide, sir. 

These kegs, I 'm told, the rebels hold 
Packed up like pickled herring, 
And they 're coming down to attack the town, 
In this new way of ferrying. 

Therefore prepare for bloody war, 
The kegs must all be routed, 
Or surely we despised shall be 
And British valor doubted. 

The royal band now ready stand 
All ranged in dread array, sir, 
With stomach stout to see it out 
And make a bloody day, sir. 

The cannon roar from shore to shore, 
The small arms make a rattle, 
Since wars began, I 'm sure no man 
E'er saw so strange a battle. 

The kegs, 't is said, though strongly made, 
Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, 
Could not oppose their powerful foes, 
The conquering British troops, sir. 

David Bushnell was later captured by the British, who 
failed to recognize him and soon released him as a harm- 



David Bushnell's "Turtle 5 25 

less civilian. After the Revolution he went to France, 
and then to Georgia, where disgusted with the Govern- 
ment's neglect of himself and his invention he changed 
his name to " Dr. Bush." He was eighty-four years old 
when he died in 1826. His identity was then revealed 
in his will. 

Bushnell found the submarine boat a useless plaything 
and made it a formidable weapon. To him it owes the 
propellor, the conning-tower, and the first suggestion of 
the torpedo. The Turtle was not only the first Ameri- 
can submarine but the forerunner of the undersea de- 
stroyer of to-day. 

" I thought and still think that it was an effort of 
genius," declared George Washington to Thomas Jeffer- 
son, " but that too many things were necessary to be 
combined to expect much against an enemy who are al- 
ways on guard." 



CHAPTER III 



ROBERT FULTON was probably the first American 
who ever went to Paris for the purpose of selling 
war-supplies to the French government. Unlike his com- 
patriots of to-day, he found anything but a ready market. 
For three years, beginning in 1797, Fulton tried con- 
stantly but vainly to interest the Directory in his plans 
for a submarine. Though a commission appointed to 
examine his designs reported favorably, the minister of 
marine would have nothing to do with them. Fulton 
built a beautiful little model submarine of mahogany and 
exhibited it, but with no results. He made an equally 
fruitless attempt to sell his invention to Holland, then 
called the Batavian Republic. Nobody seemed to have 
the slightest belief or interest in submarines. 

But Fulton was a persistent man or he would never 
have got his name into the history books. He stayed in 
Paris, where his friend Joel Barlow was American min- 
ister, and supported himself by inventing and exhibiting 
what he called " the pictures " : the first moving pictures 
the world had ever seen. These were panoramas, where 
the picture was not thrown on the screen by a lantern but 
painted on it, and the long roll of painted canvas was 
unrolled like a film between two large spools on opposite 

26 



Robert Fulton's ' Nautilus ' : 27 

sides of the stage. Very few people remember that 
Robert Fulton invented the panorama, though only a 
generation ago the great panorama of the battle of 
Gettysburg drew and thrilled as large audiences as a 
film like " The Birth of a Nation " does to-day. Fulton 
painted his own panoramas himself, for he was an artist 
before he was an engineer. He made three of them and 
had to build a separate little theater to show each one in. 
The Parisians were so well pleased with this novelty that 
they made up a song about the panoramas, and the street 
where the most popular of the three was shown is still 
called " La Rue Fulton." The picture that won the in- 
ventor this honor was a panorama of the burning of 
Moscow — not the burning of the city to drive out Na- 
poleon, for that came a dozen years later, but an earlier 
conflagration, some time in the eighteenth century. 

Napoleon overthrew the Directory and became First 
Consul and absolute ruler of France in 1800. He ap^ 
pointed three expert naval engineers to examine Fulton's 
plans, and on their approval, Napoleon advanced him 
10,000 francs to build a submarine. 

Construction was begun at once and the boat was fin- 
ished in May, 1801. She was a remarkably modern- 
looking craft, and a great improvement on everything 
that had gone before. She was the first submarine to 
have a fish-shaped, metal hull. It was built of copper 
plating on iron ribs, and was 21 feet 3 inches long and 
6 feet 5 inches in diameter at the thickest point, which 
was well forward. A heavy keel gave stability and im- 
mediately above it were the water-ballast tanks for sub- 
merging the vessel. Two men propelled the boat when 



28 The Story of the Submarine 

beneath the surface by turning a hand-winch geared to 
the shaft of a two-bladed, metal propellor. (Fulton 
called the propellor a " fly," and got the idea of it from 
the little windmill-shaped device placed in the throat of 
an old-fashioned fireplace to be revolved by the hot air 
passing up the chimney and used to turn the roasting- 




The Nautilus, Invented by Robert Fulton. 

A-B, Hull; C-D, Keel; E-E, Pumps; F, Conning Tower; G, Bulkhead; H, Pro- 
pellor; I, Vertical Rudder; L, Horizontal Rudder (diving-plane); M, 
Pivot attaching horizontal to vertical rudder; N. Gear controlling horizontal 
rudder; O, "Horn of the Nautilus; " P, Torpedo; Q, Hull of vessel at- 
tacked; X, Anchor; Y, Mast and sail for use on surface. 



spit in many a French kitchen for centuries past.) The 
third member of the crew stood in the dome-shaped con- 
ning-tower and steered, while Fulton himself controlled 
the pumps, valves, and the diving-planes or horizontal 
rudders that steered the submarine up and down. In- 
stead of forcing his boat under with a vertical-acting 
screw, like Bushnell and Nordenf elt (seepages 1 6 and 62), 



Robert Fulton's "Nautilus" 29 

Fulton, like Holland, made her dive bow-foremost by de- 
pressing her nose with the diving-planes and shoving her 
under by driving her ahead. Fulton was also the first 
to give a submarine separate means of propulsion for 
above and below the surface. Just as a modern under- 
sea boat uses oil-engines whenever it can and saves its 
storage batteries for use when submerged, Fulton spared 
the strength of his screw by rigging the Nautilus with 
a mast and sail. By pulling a rope from inside the 
vessel, the sail could be shut up like a fan, and the 
hinged mast lowered and stowed away in a groove on 
deck. Later a jib was added to the mainsail, and the 
two combined gave the Nautilus a surface speed of two 
knots an hour. She is the only submarine on record 
that could go faster below the water than above it, for 
her two-man-power propellor bettered this by half a knot. 

Her method of attack was the same as the Turtle's. 
Up through the top of the conning-tower projected what 
Fulton called the " Horn of the Nautilus." This was 
an eyeleted spike, to be driven into the bottom of a hostile 
ship and left there. From a windlass carried in a water- 
tight forward compartment of the submarine, a thin, 
strong tow-rope ran through the eyehole in the spike to 
the trigger of a flintlock inside a copper case nearly full 
of gunpowder, which was not carried on deck, as on the 
Turtle, but towed some distance astern. As soon as this 
pow r der-case came to a full stop against the spike, the 
tow-rope would pull the trigger. 

Robert Fulton felt the lack of a distinctive name for 
such an under-water charge of explosives, till he thought 
of its likeness to the electric ray, that storage battery 



30 The Story of the Submarine 

of a fish that gives a most unpleasant shock to any one 
touching it. So he took the first half of this creature's 
scientific name : Torpedo electricus. Fulton had a knack 
for picking good names. He called his submarine the 
Nautilus because it had a sail which it opened and folded 
away even as the beautiful shellfish of that name was 
supposed to furl and unfurl its large, sail-like membrane. 

On her first trial on the Seine at Paris, in May, 1801, 
the Nautilus remained submerged for twenty minutes 
with Fulton and one other man on board, and a lighted 
candle for them to navigate by. This consumed too 
much air, however, so a small glass window was placed 
in the conning-tower, and gave light enough instead. 
Four men were then able to remain under for an hour. 
After that, Fulton made the first compressed-air tank, 
a copper globe containing a cubic foot of compressed 
air, by drawing on which the submarine's crew could 
stay under for six hours. This was in the harbor of 
Brest, where the Nautilus had been taken overland. A 
trial attack was made on an old bulk, which was success- 
fully blown up. The submarine also proved its ability 
either to furl its sails and dive quickly out of sight, or to 
cruise for a considerable distance on the surface. Once 
it sailed for seventy miles down the English Channel. 

Fulton had planned a submarine campaign for scaring 
the British navy and merchant marine out of the narrow 
seas and so bringing Great Britain to her knees, more 
than a century before the German emperor proclaimed 
his famous " war zone " around the British Isles. In 
one of his letters to the Directory, the American in- 
ventor declared that: 



Robert Fulton's " Nautilus ' 31 

" The enormous commerce of England, no less than its 
monstrous Government, depends upon its military marine. 
Should some vessels of war be destroyed by means so 
novel, so hidden, and so incalculable, the confidence of 
the seamen will vanish and the fleet will be rendered use- 
less from the moment of the first terror. " 

To a friend in America, Fulton wrote from Paris on 
November 20, 1798: 

" I would ask any one if all the American difficulties 
during this war are not owing to the naval systems of 
Europe and a licensed robbery on the ocean? How then 
is America to prevent this ? Certainly not by attempting 
to build a fleet to cope with the fleets of Europe, but if 
possible by rendering the European fleets useless/' 

Fulton began his campaign by an attack on two brigs, 
the nearest vessels of the English blockading fleet. But 
whenever the Nautilus left port for this purpose, both 
brigs promptly stood out to sea and remained there till 
the submarine went home. Unknown to Fulton, his ac- 
tions were being* closely watched by the English secret 
service, whose spies were always able to send a timely 
warning to the British fleet. During the day time, when 
the Nautilus was about, the warships were kept under full 
sail, with lookouts in the crosstrees watching with tele- 
scopes for the first glimpse of its sail or conning-tower. 
At night, the frigates and ships-of-the-line were guarded 
by picket-boats rowing round and round them, just as 
modern dreadnoughts are guarded by destroyers. 

Disappointed by the lack of results, the French naval 
authorities refused either to let Fulton build a larger 
and more efficient submarine, or to grant commissions in 



32 The Story of the Submarine 

the navy to him and his crew. He wanted some assur- 
ance that in case they were captured they would not be 
hanged by the British, who then as now denounced sub- 
marine warfare by others as little better than piracy. To 
guarantee their own safety, Fulton proposed that the 
French government threaten to retaliate by hanging an 
equal number of English prisoners, but it was pointed out 
to him that this would only lead to further executions 
by the British, who had many more French prisoners of 
war than there were captive Englishmen in France. 

Napoleon had lost faith in the submarine, nor could 
Fulton interest him in a steamboat which he now built 
and operated on the Seine, till it was sunk by the weight 
of the machinery breaking the hull in two. So Fulton 
quit France and crossed over to England, where Mr. 
Pitt, the prime minister, was very much interested in his 
inventions. 

Fulton succeeded in planting one of his torpedoes under 
an old empty Danish brig, the Dorothea, in Deal Harbor, 
in front of Walmer Castle, Pitt's own residence, on Oc- 
tober 15, 1805. The prime minister had had to hurry 
back to London, but there were many naval officers 
present, and one of them declared loudly that he would 
be quite unconcerned if he were sitting at dinner at that 
moment in the cabin of the Dorothea. Ten minutes later 
the clockwork ran out and the torpedo exploded, break- 
ing the brig in two amidships and hurling the frag- 
ments high in the air. The success of this experiment 
was not entirely pleasing to the heads of the British navy. 
Their opinion was voiced by Admiral Lord St. Vincent, 
who declared that: 



Robert Fulton's ' Nautilus ' 



33 



" Pitt was the greatest fool that ever existed, to en- 
courage a mode of war which they who command the 
seas did not want and which if successful would deprive 
them of it." 

Six days after the destruction of the Dorothea, the sea- 




Destruction of the Dorothea. 

From a woodcut by Robert Fulton. 

power of France was broken by Nelson at the battle 
of Trafalgar. Napoleon now gave up all hope of gain- 
ing the few hours' control of the Channel that would 
have enabled him to invade England, and broke up the 
camp of his Grand Army that had waited so long at 



34 The Story of the Submarine 

Boulogne. With this danger gone, England was no 
longer interested in submarines and torpedoes. So Ful- 
ton returned to America, to build the Clairmont and win 
his place in history. But to him, steam navigation was 
far less important than submarine warfare. In the letter 
to his old friend Joel Barlow, dated New York, August 
22, 1807, in which he described the first voyage of the 
Clairmont up the Hudson, Fulton said : 

" However, I will not admit that it is half so important 
as the torpedo system of defense or attack, for out of this 
will grow the liberty of the seas — an object of infinite 
importance to the welfare of America and every civilized 
country. But thousands of witnesses have now seen the 
steamboat in rapid movement and they believe; but they 
have not seen a ship of war destroyed by a torpedo, and 
they do not believe. We cannot expect people in general 
to have knowledge of physics or power to reason from 
cause to effect, but in case we have war and the enemy's 
ships come into our waters, if the government will give 
me reasonable means of action, I will soon convince the 
world that we have surer and cheaper modes of defense 
than they are aware of." 

Fulton had been having his troubles with the navy de- 
partment. Soon after his return to this country he had 
made his usual demonstration of torpedoing a small an- 
chored vessel, but it was not until 1810 that he was given 
the opportunity to make a test attack on a United States 
warship. But stout old Commodore Rogers, who had 
been entrusted with the defense of the brig Argus, under 
which Fulton was to plant a torpedo, anchored the vessel 
in shallow water, stretched a tight wall of spars and net- 



Robert Fulton's " Nautilus " 35 

ting all round her, and successfully defied the inventor 
to blow her up. Even a modern destroyer or submarine 
would be puzzled to get past this defense. Though com- 
pelled to admit his failure, Fulton pointed out that " a 
system then in its infancy, which compelled a hostile 
vessel to guard herself by such extraordinary means, 
could not fail of becoming a most important mode of war- 
fare;' 

It was a great triumph for conservatism — the same 
spirit of conservatism that threatens to send our navy 
into its next war with no battle-cruisers, too few scouts 
and sea-planes, and the slowest dreadnoughts in the world. 
Though Fulton published a wonderful little book on 
' Torpedo War and Submarine Explosions " in New 
York in 18 10, the United States navy made no use of it 
in the War of 1812. A privateer submarine from Con- 
necticut made three dives under the British battleship 
Ramillies off New London, but failed to attach a torpedo 
for the old reason: copper sheathing. Further attacks 
were prevented by the captain of the Ramillies, who gave 
notice that he had had a number of American prisoners 
placed on board as hostages. Fulton himself was hard 
at work superintending the building both of the Demolo- 
gos, the first steam-propelled battleship, and the Mute, 
a large armored submarine that was to carry a silent en- 
gine and a crew of eighty men, when he died in 181 5. 



CHAPTER IV 

SUBMARINES IN THE CIVIL WAR 

THE most powerful battleship in the world, half a 
century ago, was the U.S.S. New Ironsides. She 
was a wooden-hulled, ship-rigged steamer of 3486 tons 
displacement — about one tenth the size of a modern 
superdreadnought — her sides plated with four inches 
of iron armor, and carrying twenty heavy guns. On the 
night of October 5, 1863, the New Ironsides was on block- 
ade duty off Charleston Harbor, when Ensign Howard, 
the officer of the deck, saw something approaching that 
looked like a floating plank. He hailed it, and was an- 
swered by a rifle ball that stretched him, mortally 
wounded, on the deck. An instant later came the flash 
and roar of a tremendous explosion, a column of water 
shot high into the air alongside, and the New Ironsides 
was shaken violently from stem to stern. 

The Confederate submarine David had crept up and 
driven a spar-torpedo against Goliath's armor. 

But except for a few splintered timbers, a flooded en- 
gine-room, and a marine's broken leg, no damage had 
been done. As the Confederate craft was too close and 
too low in the water for the broadside guns to bear, the 
crew of the ironclad lined the rail and poured volley 
after volley of musketry into their dimly seen adversary 

36 



Submarines in the Civil War 



37 



till she drifted away into the night. Her crew of seven 
men had dived overboard at the moment of impact, and 
were all picked up by different vessels of the blockading 
Heet, except the engineer and one other, who swam back- 
to the David, started her engine again, and brought her 
safely home to Charleston. 

The David was a cigar-shaped steam launch, fifty- four 
feet long and six feet broad at the thickest point. Pro- 

Midship section. JL s .«*; V 




View whsn immersed: 

Views of a Confederate David. 
From Scharf's History of the Confederate States Navy. 

jecting from her bow was a fifteen-foot spar, with a tor- 
pedo charged with sixty pounds of gunpowder at the end 
of it. This was exploded by the heat given ofif by certain 
chemicals, after they were shaken up together by the im- 
pact of the torpedo against the enemy's ship. The David, 
steaming at her full speed of seven knots an hour, struck 
squarely against the New Ironsides at the water-line and 
rebounded to a distance of seven or eight feet before 
this clumsy detonator could do its work. When the ex- 



38 The Story of the Submarine 

plosion came, the intervening body of water prevented it 
from doing any great damage. 

The David was not a true submarine but a surface tor- 
pedo boat, that could be submerged till only the funnel 
and a small pilot-house were exposed. A number of 
other Davids were built and operated by the Confederate 
States navy, but the first of them was the only one to 
accomplish anything. 

The one real submarine possessed by the Confederacy 
was not a David, though she is usually so called. This 
was the C.S.S. Hundley, a hand-power " diving-boat " 




C. S. .S. Hundley. 

The Only Submarine to sink a Hostile Warship before the Outbreak of 

the Present War. 

not unlike Fulton's Nautilus, but very much clumsier and 
harder to manage. She had ballast tanks and a pair 
of diving-planes for steering her up and down, and she 
was designed to attack an enemy's ship by swimming 
under it, towing a torpedo that would explode on striking 
her opponent's keel. 



Submarines in the Civil War 39 

The Hundley was built at Mobile, Alabama, by the 
firm of Hundley and McKlintock, named for the senior 
partner, and brought to Charleston on a flatcar. There 
she was manned by a crew of nine volunteers, eight of 
whom sat in a row and turned the cranks on the propel- 
lor-shaft, while the ninth man steered. There was no 
conning-tower and the forward hatchway had to be left 
open for the helmsman to look out of while running on 
the surface. On the Hundley's first practice cruise, the 
wash from the paddle-wheels of a passing steamer poured 
suddenly down the open hatchway. Only the steersman 
and commanding officer, Lieutenant Payne, had time to 
save himself before the submarine sank, drowning the 
rest of her crew. 

The boat was raised and Payne took her out with a 
new crew. This time a sudden squall sank her before 
they could close the hatches, and Payne escaped, with two 
of his men. He tried a third time, only to be capsized 
off Fort Sumter, with the loss of four of his crew. On 
the fourth trip, the hatches were closed, the tanks filled, 
and an attempt was made to navigate beneath the surface. 
But the Hundley dived too suddenly, stuck her nose deep 
into the muddy bottom, and stayed there till her entire 
crew were suffocated. On the fifth trial she became en- 
tangled in the cable of an anchored vessel, with the same 
result. 

By this time the submarine's victims numbered thirty- 
five, and the Confederates had nicknamed her the " Peri- 
patetic Coffin/' But at the sixth call for volunteers, they 
still came forward. It was decided to risk no more lives 
on practice trips but to attack at once. In spite of the 



40 The Story of the Submarine 

protests of Mr. Hundley, the designer of the craft, her 
latest and last commander, Lieutenant Dixon of the 21st 
South Carolina Infantry, was ordered by General Beau- 
regard to use the vessel as a surface torpedo-boat, sub- 
merged to the hatch-coaming and with the hatches open. 
A spar-torpedo, to be exploded by pulling a trigger with 
a light line runing back into the boat, was mounted on the 
bow. Thus armed, and manned by Lieutenant Dixon, 
Captain Carlson, and five enlisted men of their regiment, 
the little Hundley put out over Charleston bar on the 
night of February 17, 1864, to attack some vessel of 
the blockading fleet. This proved to be the U.S.S. 
Housatonic, a fine new thirteen-gun corvette of 1264 
tons. What followed is best described by Admiral 
David Porter in his " Naval History of the Civil War." 

" At about 8.45 p.m., the officer of the deck on board 
the unfortunate vessel discovered something about 100 
yards away, moving along the water. It came directly 
towards the ship, and within two minutes of the time it 
was first sighted was alongside. The cable was slipped, 
the engines backed, and all hands called to quarters. But 
it was too late — the torpedo struck the Housatonic just 
forward of the mainmast, on the starboard side, on a line 
with the magazine. The man who steered her (the 
Hundley) knew where the vital spots of the steamer were 
and he did his work well. When the explosion took place 
the ship trembled all over as if by the shock of an earth- 
quake, and seemed to be lifted out of the water, and then 
sank stern foremost, heeling to port as she went 
down." 

The Hundley was not seen after the explosion, and it 



Submarines in the Civil War 41 

was supposed that she had backed away and escaped. 
But when peace came, and Charleston Harbor was being 
cleared of the wrecks with which war had clogged it, the 
divers sent down to inspect the Housatonic found the 
Hundley lying beside her. Sucked in by the rush of the 
water through the hole her torpedo had made, she had 
been caught and dragged down by her own victim. All 
the Hundley's crew were found dead within her. So 
perished the first and last submarine to sink a hostile war- 
ship, before the outbreak of the present war. A smaller 
underwater boat of the same type was privately built at 
New Orleans at the beginning of the war, lost on her trial 
trip, and not brought up again till after peace was de- 
clared. 

The North had a hand-power submarine, that was built 
at the Georgetown Navy Yard in 1862. It w r as designed 
by a Frenchman, whose name is now forgotten but who 
might have been a contemporary of Cornelius Van Drebel. 
Except that its hull was of steel instead of wood and 
greased leather, this first submarine of the United States 
navy was no better than an eel-boat of the seventeenth 
century. It was propelled by eight pairs of oars, with 
hinged blades that folded up like a book on the return 
stroke. The boat was thirty-five feet long and six in 
diameter, and was rowed by sixteen men. It was sub- 
merged by flooding ballast tanks. There was an oxygen 
tank and an apparatus for purifying the used air by blow- 
ing it over lime. A spar-torpedo was to be run out on 
rollers in the bow. 

Ten thousand dollars was paid to the inventor of this 
medieval leftover, and he prudently left the country be- 



42 The Story of the Submarine 

fore he could be called on to operate it, though he had 
been promised a reward of five thousand dollars for every 
Confederate ironclad he succeeded in blowing up. Like 
the first Monitor, this nameless submarine was lost in 
a storm off Cape Hatteras, while being towed by a 
steamer. 

After the loss of the Housatonic, the North built two 
semi-submersible steam torpedo-boats on the same idea 
as the David, but larger and faster. Both were armed 
with spar-torpedoes and fitted with ballast tanks to sink 
them very low in the water when they attacked. The 
smaller of the two, the Stromboli, could be submerged 
till only her pilot-house, smoke-stack, and one ventilator 
showed above the water. The other boat was called the 
Spuyten Diiyvil. She could be sunk till her deck, which 
was covered with three inches of iron armor, was level 
with the water, but she bristled with masts, funnels, con- 
ning-towers, ventilators, and other excrescences that 
sprouted out of her hull at the most unexpected places. 
Neither of these craft was ever used in action. 



CHAPTER V 

THE WHITEHEAD TORPEDO 

HOW best to float a charge of explosives against the 
hull of an enemy's ship and there explode it is the 
great problem of torpedo warfare. The spar-torpedo, 
that did such effective work in the Civil War, was little 
more than a can of gunpowder on the end of a stick. 
This stick or spar was mounted usually on the bow of a 
steam-launch, either partially submerged, like the Darvid, 
or boldly running on the surface over log-booms and 
through a hail of bullets and grapeshot, as when Lieu- 
tenant Cushing sank the Confederate ironclad Albemarle. 
Once alongside, the spar-torpedo was run out to its full 
length, raised, depressed, and finally fired by pulling dif- 
ferent ropes. So small was the chance of success and so 
great the danger to the launch's crew that naval officers 
and inventors all the world over sought constantly for 
some surer and safer way. 

Early in the sixties, an Austrian artillery officer at- 
tached to the coast defenses conceived the idea of sending 
out the launch without a crew. He made some drawings 
of a big toy boat, to be driven by steam or hot air or even 
by clockwork, and steered from the shore by long ropes. 
As it would have no crew, this boat could carry the ex- 
plosives in its hull, and the spars which were to project 
from it in all directions would carry no torpedoes them- 

43 



44 The Story of the Submarine 

selves but would serve to explode the boat's cargo of 
guncotton by firing a pistol into it, as soon as one of the 
spars came into contact with the target. Before he could 
carry out his ideas any further, this officer died and his 
plans were turned over to Captain Lupuis of the Aus- 
trian navy. Lupuis experimented diligently with surface 
torpedoes till 1864, but found that he would have to dis- 
cover some better steering-device than ropes from the 
shore and some other motive-power than steam or clock- 
work. So he consulted with Mr. Whitehead, the English 
manager of a firm of engine manufacturers at the sea- 
port of Fiume. 

Whitehead gave the torpedo a fish-shaped hull, so that 
it could run beneath instead of on the surface. For mo- 
tive-power he used compressed air, which proved much 
superior to either steam or clockwork. And by improv- 
ing its rudders, he enabled the little craft to keep its course 
without the aid of guide-ropes from the shore. The chief 
defect of the first Whitehead torpedoes, which were fin- 
ished and tried in 1866, was that they kept bobbing to the 
surface, or else they would dive too deep and pass harm- 
lessly under the target. To correct this defect, White- 
head invented by 1868 what he called the " balance cham- 
ber." Then, as now, each torpedo was divided into a 
number of separate compartments or chambers, and in 
one of these the inventor placed a most ingenious device 
for keeping the torpedo at a uniform depth. The contents 
of the balance-chamber was Whitehead's great secret, 
and it was not revealed to the public for twenty years. 

The automobile or, as it was then called, the " sub- 
marine locomotive " torpedo was now a practicable, 



The Whitehead Torpedo 45 

though by no means perfected, weapon, and the Austrian 
naval authorities gave it a thorough trial at Fiume in 
1868. Whitehead rigged up a crude ejecting tube on the 
bow of a gunboat, and successfully discharged two of 
his torpedoes at a yacht. The Austrian government 
promptly adopted the weapon, but could not obtain a 
monopoly of it, for Whitehead was a patriotic English- 
man. The British admiralty invited him to England two 
years later, and after careful trials of its own, induced the 
English government to buy Whitehead's secret and manu- 
facturing rights for $45,000. Other nations soon added 
:i Whiteheads " to their navies, and in 1873 there was 
built in Norway a large, fast steam launch for the ex- 
press purpose of carrying torpedoes and discharging them 
at an enemy. Every one began to build larger and 
swifter launches, till they evolved the torpedo-boat and 
the destroyer of to-day. 

The torpedo itself has undergone a similar development 
in size and efficiency. The difference between the White- 
heads of forty-five years ago and those of to-day is strik- 
ingly shown in the following table : 

British Naval Torpedoes of 1870 

Length, Diameter, Charge, Range, Speed, 

Feet Inches Pounds Yards Knots 

Large 14 16 67 600 7.5 

guncotton 

Small 13 10.58 m. 14 18 200 8.5 

dynamite 

British Naval Torpedoes of 1915 
Large 21 21 330 12,000 48 

guncotton 
Small 18 18 200 16,000 36 

guncotton 



46 The Story of the Submarine 

The length of a large modern torpedo, it will be ob- 
served, is only three inches less than that of Fulton's 
famous submarine boat of 180 1. A Whitehead torpedo 
is really a small automatic submarine, steered and con- 
trolled by the most ingenious and sensitive machinery, 
as surely as if it were manned by a crew of Lilliputian 
seamen. 

Projecting from the head is the " striker," a rod which, 
when the torpedo runs into anything hard, is driven back 
in against a detonator or " percussion-cap " of fulminate 
of mercury. Just as the hammer of a toy " cap-pistol " 
explodes a paper cap, so the sudden shock of the in-driven 
striker explodes the fulminate, which is instantly ex- 
panded to more than two thousand times its former size. 
This, in turn, gives a severe blow to the surrounding 
" primer " of dry guncotton. The primer is exploded, 
and by its own expansion sets off the main charge of sev- 
eral hundred pounds of wet guncotton. 

The reason for this is that though wet guncotton is 
safe to handle because a very great shock is required 
to make it explode, dry guncotton is much less so, while a 
shell or torpedo filled with fulminate of mercury would 
be more dangerous to its owners than to their enemies, 
because the slightest jar might set it off prematurely. 
Every precaution is taken to prevent a torpedo's explod- 
ing too soon and damaging the vessel from which it 
is fired. 

When the torpedo is shot out of the tube, by com- 
pressed air, like a pea from a pea-shooter, the striker is 
held fast by the " jammer " : a small propellor-shaped 
collar, whose blades begin to revolve as soon as they 



The Whitehead Torpedo 47 

strike the water, till the collar has unscrewed itself and 
dropped off after the torpedo has traveled about forty 
feet. A copper pin that runs through the striker-rod 
is not removed but must be broken short off by a blow 
of considerable violence, such as would be given by run- 
ning into a ship's hull. As a third safeguard, there is a 
strong safety-catch, that must be released by hand, just 
before the torpedo is placed in the tube. 

The explosive charge of two or three hundred pounds 
of wet guncotton is called the " war-head." In peace and 
for target-practice it is replaced by a dummy head of 
thick steel. The usual target is the space between two 
buoys moored a ship's length or less apart. At the end 
of a practice run, the torpedo rises to the surface, where 
it can be recovered and used again. This is distinctly 
worth while, for a modern torpedo costs more than seven 
thousand dollars. 

Back of the war-head is the air-chamber, that contains 
the motive-power of this miniature submarine. The air 
is either packed into it by powerful pumps, on shore 
or shipboard, or else drawn from one of the storage 
flasks of compressed air, a number of which are car- 
ried on every submarine. The air-chamber of a mod- 
ern torpedo is charged at a pressure of from 2000 to 2500 
pounds per square inch. As the torpedo leaves the tube, 
a lever on its back is struck and knocked over by a 
little projecting piece of metal, and the starting-valve 
of the air-chamber is opened. But if the compressed air 
were allowed to reach and start the engines at once, they 
would begin to revolve the propellors while they were 
still in the air inside the tube. This would cause the 



48 The Story of the Submarine 

screws to " race," or spin round too rapidly and perhaps 
break off. So there is a " delaying- valve," which keeps 
the air away from the engines till another valve-lever is 
swung over by the impact of the water against a little 
metal flap. 

As the compressed air rushes through the pipe from the 
chamber to the engine-room, it passes through a " re- 
ducing-valve," which keeps it from spurting at the start 
and lagging at the finish. By supplying the air to the 
engines at a reduced but uniform pressure, this device 
enables the torpedo to maintain the same speed through- 
out the run. At the same time the compressed air is 
heated by a small jet of burning oil, with a consequent 
increase in pressure, power, and speed, estimated at 30 
per cent. All these devices are kept not in the air-cham- 
ber itself but in the next compartment, the balance-cham- 
ber. 

Here is the famous little machine, once a close-kept 
secret but now known to all the world, that holds the 
torpedo at any desired depth. Think of a push-button, 
working in a tube open to the sea, with the water pres- 
sure pushing the button in and a spiral spring inside 
shoving it out. This push-button — called a " hydro- 
static valve " — is connected by a system of levers with 
the two diving-planes or horizontal rudders that steer 
the torpedo up or down. By turning a screw, the spring 
can be adjusted to exert a force equal to the pressure of 
the water at any given depth. If the torpedo dives too 
deep, the increased water-pressure forces in the valve, 
moves the levers, raises the diving-planes, and steers the 
torpedo towards the surface. As the water pressure 



The Whitehead Torpedo 49 

grows less, the spring forces out the valve, depresses 
the diving-planes, and brings the miniature submarine 
down to its proper depth again. When his torpedoes 
grew too big to be controlled by the comparatively feeble 
force exerted by the hydrostatic valve, Whitehead in- 
vented the " servo-motor " : an auxiliary, compressed- 
air engine, less than five inches long, sensitive enough to 
respond to the slightest movement of the valve levers but 
strong enough to steer the largest torpedo, exactly as the 
steam steering-gear moves the huge rudder of an ocean 
liner. 

There is also a heavy pendulum, swinging fore and aft 
and attached to the diving-planes, that checks any sud- 
den up-or-down movement of the torpedo by inclining 
the planes and restoring the horizontal position. 

Xext comes the engine-room, with its three-cylinder 
motor, capable of developing from thirty-five to fifty-five 
horse-power. The exhaust air from the engine passes 
out through the stern in a constant stream of bubbles, 
leaving a broad white streak on the surface of the water 
as the torpedo speeds to its mark. 

The aftermost compartment is called the buoyancy 
chamber. Besides adding to the floatability of the tor- 
pedo, this space also holds the engine shaft and the gear 
attaching it to the twin propellors. The first White- 
heads were single-screw boats. But the revolution of 
the propellor in one direction set up a reaction that caused 
the torpedo itself to partially revolve or heel over in the 
other, disturbing its rudders and swerving it from its 
course. This reaction is neutralized by using two pro- 
pellers, one revolving to the right, the other to the left. 



50 The Story of the Submarine 

Instead of being placed side by side, as on a steamer, they 
are mounted one behind the other, with the shaft of one 
revolving inside the hollow shaft of the other, and in the 
opposite direction. 

Long after they could be depended on to keep a proper 
depth, the Whiteheads and other self-propelled torpedoes 
were liable to swing suddenly to port or starboard, or 
even turn completely round. During the war between 
Chile and Peru, in 1879, the Peruvian ironclad Huascar 
discharged an automobile torpedo that went halfway to 
the target, changed its mind, and was coming back to blow 
up its owners when an officer swam out to meet it and 
succeeded in turning it aside, for the torpedoes of that 
time were slow and small as well as erratic. 

Nowadays a torpedo is kept on a straight course by a 
gyroscope placed in the buoyancy chamber. Nearly 
every boy knows the gyroscopic top, like a little flywheel, 
that you can spin on the edge of a tumbler. The upper 
part of this toy is a heavy little metal wheel, and if you 
try to push it over while it is spinning, it resists and 
pushes back, as if it were alive. A similar wheel, weigh- 
ing about two pounds, is placed in the buoyancy chamber 
of a Whitehead. When the torpedo starts, it releases 
either a powerful spring or an auxiliary compressed air 
engine that sets the gyroscope to spinning at more than 
two thousand revolutions a minute. It revolves verti- 
cally, in the fore-and-aft line of the torpedo, and is 
mounted on a pivoted stand. If the torpedo deviates 
from its straight course, the gyroscope does not, and the 
consequent change in their relative positions brings the 
flywheel into contact with a lever running to the servo- 



52 The Story of the Submarine 

motor that controls the two vertical rudders, which soon 
set the torpedo right again. 

Thus guided and driven, a modern torpedo speeds 
swiftly and surely to its target, there to blow itself into 
a thousand pieces, with a force sufficient to sink a ship 
a thousand times its size. 

The Whitehead is used by every navy in the world 
except the German, which has its own torpedo : the 
" Schwartzkopf." This, however, is practicaly identical 
with the Whitehead, except that its hull is made of bronze 
instead of steel and its war-head is charged with trini- 
trotuluol, or T.N.T., a much more powerful explosive 
than guncotton. 

After the Russo-Japanese War, when several Russian 
battleships kept afloat although they had been struck by 
Japanese torpedoes, many naval experts declared that an 
exploding war-head spent most of its energy in throwing 
a great column of water up into the air, instead of blow- 
ing in the side of the ship. So Commander Davis of the 
United States navy invented his " gun-torpedo." This 
is like a Whitehead in every respect except that instead 
of a charge of guncotton it carries in its head a short 
eight-inch cannon loaded with an armor-piercing shell 
and a small charge of powder. In this type of torpedo, 
the impact of the striker against the target serves to fire 
the gun. The shell then passes easily through the thin 
side of the ship below the armor-belt and through any 
protecting coal-bunkers and bulkheads it may encounter, 
till it reaches the ship's vitals, where it is exploded by the 
delayed action of an adjustable time-fuse. What would 
happen if it burst in a magazine or boiler-room is best 



The Whitehead Torpedo 



53 



left to the imagination. Several Davis gun-torpedoes 
have been built and used against targets with very satis- 
factory results, but they have not yet been used in actual 
warfare. 

Mr. Edward F. Chandler, M.E., one of the foremost 
torpedo-experts in America, is dissatisfied with the com- 




Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. 

Davis Gun-Torpedo after discharge, showing eight-inch gun forward 

of air-flask. 



pressed-air driven gyroscope, both because it does not 
begin to revolve till after the torpedo has been launched 
and perhaps deflected from its true course, and because 
it cannot be made to spin continuously throughout the 
long run of a modern torpedo. He proposes to remove 
the compressed-air servo-motors, both for this purpose 
and for controlling the horizontal-rudders by the hydro- 
static valve, and replace them with an electrical-driven 
gyroscope and depth-gear. The increased efficiency of 
the latter would enable him to get rid of the heavy, un- 



54 The Story of the Submarine 

certain pendulum, thus allowing for the weight of the 
storage batteries. Mr. Chandler declares that his elec- 
trically-controlled torpedo can be lowered over the side 
of a small boat, headed in any desired direction, and 
started, without any launching-tube. 1 

Though the automobile torpedo has been brought to so 



**- 



K 



Courtesy of the Electric JBoat Company. 

Effect of Davis Gun-Torpedo on a specially-constructed target. 

high a state of perfection, the original idea of steering 
from the shore has not been abandoned. The Brennan 
and Sims-Edison controllable torpedoes were driven and 
steered by electricity, receiving the current through wires 
trailed astern and carrying little masts and flags above the 
surface to guide the operator on shore. But these also 
served as a warning to the enemy and gave him too good 
a chance either to avoid the torpedo or destroy it with 
machine-gun fire. Then, too, the trailing wires reduced 

1 See the " Scientific American/' August 7, 1915. 



The Whitehead Torpedo 55 

its speed and were always liable to get tangled in the 
propellors. Controllable torpedoes of this type were 
abandoned before the outbreak of the present war and 
will probably never be used in action. 

A new and more promising sort of controllable torpedo 
was immediately suggested by the invention of wireless 
telegraphy. Many inventors have been working to per- 
fect such a weapon, and a young American engineer, Mr. 
John Hays Hammond, Jr., seems to have succeeded. 
From his wireless station on shore, Mr. Hammond can 
make a small, crewless electric launch run hither and yon 
as he pleases about the harbor of Gloucester, Massachu- 
setts. The commander and many of the officers of the 
United States coast artillery corps have carefully in- 
spected and tested this craft, which promises to be the 
forerunner of a new and most formidable species of 
coast defense torpedo. 



CHAPTER VI 

FREAKS AND FAILURES 

DURING the half-century following the death of Ful- 
ton, scarcely a year went by without the designing 
or launching of a new man-power submarine. Some of 
these boats, notably those of the Bavarian Wilhelm Bauer, 
were surprisingly good, others were most amazingly bad, 
but none of them led to anything better. Inventor after 
i lventor wasted his substance discovering what Van 
Drebel, Bushnell, and Fulton had known before him, 
only to die and have the same facts painfully rediscovered 
by some one on the other side of the earth. 

A striking example of this lack of progress is Hal- 
stead's Intelligent Whale. Built for the United States 
navy at New York, in the winter of 1864—5, this craft is 
no more modern and much less efficient than Fulton's 
Nautilus of 1801. The Intelligent Whale is a fat, cigar- 
shaped, iron vessel propelled by a screw cranked by man- 
power and submerged by dropping two heavy anchors to 
the bottom and then warping the boat down to any de- 
sired depth. A diver can then emerge from a door in the 
submarine's bottom, to place a mine under a hostile ship. 
It was not until 1872 that the Intelligent Whale was sent 
on a trial trip in Newark Bay. Manned by an utterly in- 
experienced and very nervous crew, the clumsy submarine 
got entirely out of control and had to be hauled up by a 

56 



Freaks and Failures 57 

cable that had been thoughtfully attached to her before 
she went down. Fortunately no lives had been lost, 
but the wildest stories were told and printed, till the 
imaginary death-roll ran up to forty-nine. The Intel- 
ligent Whole was hauled up on dry land and can still 
be seen on exhibition at the corner of Third Street and 
Perry Avenue in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

Lack of motive-power was the reason why man-sized 
submarines lagged behind their little automatic brethren, 
the Whitehead torpedoes. Compressed air was just the 
thing for a spurt, but when two Frenchmen, Captain 
Bourgois and M. Brun, built the Plongeur, a steel sub- 
marine 146 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, at Roche- 
fort in 1863, and fitted it with an eighty-horse-power, 
compressed-air engine, they discovered that the storage- 
flasks emptied themselves too quickly to permit a voyage 
of any length. 

The Plongeur also proved that while you can sink a 
boat to the bottom by filling her ballast-tanks or make 
her rise to the surface by emptying them, you cannot 
make her float suspended between two bodies of water 
except by holding her there by some mechanical means. 
Without anything of the kind, the Plongeur kept bouncing 
up and down like a rubber ball. Once her inventors navi- 
gated her horizontally for some distance, only to find 
that she had been sliding on her stomach along the soft 
muddy bottom of a canal. Better results w^ere obtained 
after the Plongeur was fitted with a crude pair of diving- 
planes. But the inefficiency of her compressed-air en- 
gine caused her to be condemned and turned into a water 
tank. 



Freaks and Failures 



59 



Electricity was first applied in 1861 by another French- 
man, named Olivier Rioti. This is the ideal motive- 
power for underwater boats, and it was at this time that 
Jules Verne described the ideal submarine in his immortal 
story of " Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea." 
But before we can have a Nautilus like Captain Nemo's 
we must discover an electric storage battery of unheard-of 
lightness and capacity. 

There was a great revival of French interest in elec- 
tric submarines after Admiral Aube, who was a lifelong 



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LE PLONGEUR 




L^ Plongeur. 



submarine " fan," became minister of marine in 1886. 
In spite of much ridicule and opposition, he authorized 
the construction of a small experimental vessel of this 
type called the Gymnote. She was a wild little thing 
that did everything short of turning somersaults when she 
dived, but she was enough of a success to be followed by 
a larger craft named, after the great engineer who had 
designed her predecessor, the Gustave Zede. 

' The history of the Gustave Zede shows how much 
in earnest the French were in the matter of submarines. 
When she was first launched she was a failure in almost 



60 The Story of the Submarine 

every respect, and it was only after some years, during 
which many alterations and improvements were carried 
out, that she became a serviceable craft. At first noth- 
ing would induce the Gustave Zede to quit the surface, 
and when at last she did plunge she did it so effectually 
that she went down to the bottom in 10 fathoms of water 
at an angle of 30 degrees. The committee of engineers 
were on board at the time, and it speaks well for their 
patriotism that they did not as a result of their unpleasant 
experience condemn the Gustave Zede and advise the 
government to spend no more money on submarine 
craft." x 

Twenty-nine other electric submarines were built for 
the French navy between 1886 and 1901. During the 
same period, a French gentleman named M. Goubet 
built and experimented with two very small electric sub- 
marines, each of which was manned by two men, who sat 
back to back on a sort of settee stuffed with machinery. 
Little or big, all these French boats had the same fatal 
defect : lack of power. Their storage batteries, called on 
to propel them above, as well as below, the surface, be- 
came exhausted after a few hours' cruising. They were 
as useless for practical naval warfare as an electric run- 
about would be to haul guns or carry supplies in Flanders. 

But if compressed-air and electricity were too quickly 
exhausted, gasoline or petroleum was even less practicable 
for submarine navigation. To set an oil-engine, that 
derives its power from the explosion of a mixture of 
oil-vapor and air, at work in a small closed space like the 
interior of a submarine, would soon make it uninhabit- 

1 Herbert C. Fyf e, " Submarine Warfare," p. 269. 



Freaks and Failures 61 

able. While Mr. Holland was puzzling how to overcome 
this difficulty, in the middle eighties, a Swedish inventor 
named Nordenfeldt was building submarines to be run by 
steam-power. 

Mr. Nordenfeldt, who is remembered to-day as the in- 
ventor of the famous gun that bears his name, had taken 
up the idea of an English clergyman named Garett, who 
in 1878 had built a submarine called the Resargam, or 
" I Shall Rise." Garett's second boat, built a year later, 
had a steam-engine. When the vessel was submerged, 
the smoke-stack was closed by a sliding panel, the furnace 
doors were shut tight, and the engine run by the steam 
given off by a big tank full of bottled-up hot water. 
Nordenfeldt improved this system till his hot-water tanks 
gave off enough steam to propel his boat beneath the sur- 
face for a distance of fourteen miles. 

He also rediscovered and patented Bushnell's device 
for submerging a boat by pushing it straight down and 
holding it under with a vertical propellor. His first sub- 
marine had two of these, placed in sponsons or projec- 
tions on either side of the center of the hull. The Nor- 
denfeldt boats, with their cigar-shaped hulls and pro- 
jecting smoke-stacks, looked like larger editions of the 
Civil War Davids, and like them, could be submerged by 
taking in water-ballast till only a strip of deck w 7 ith the 
funnel and conning-tower projected above the surface. 
Then the vertical propellors would begin to revolve and 
force the boat straight down on an even keel. Mr. Nor- 
denfeldt insisted with great earnestness that this was the 
only safe and proper w-ay to submerge a submarine. If 
you tried to steer it downward with any kind of driving- 



62 The Story of the Submarine 

planes, he declared, then the boat was liable to keep on 
descending, before you could pull its head up, till it either 
struck the bottom or was crushed in by the pressure of 
too great a depth of water. There was a great deal of 
truth in this, but Mr. Nordenfeldt failed to realize that 
if one of his vertical propellors pushed only a little harder 




Steam Submarine Nordenfeldt II, at Constantinople, 1887. 
serve vertical-acting propellors on deck. 

Reproduced from " Submarine Navigation, Past and Present " by Alan 
H. Burgoyne, by permission of E. P. Dutton & Company 



than the other, then the keel of his own submarine was 
going to be anything but even. 

The first Nordenfeldt boat was launched in 1886 and 
bought by Greece, after a fairly successful trial in the 
Bay of Salamis. Two larger and more powerful sub- 
marines : Nordenfeldt II and 777, were promptly ordered 



Freaks and Failures 63 

by Greece's naval rival Turkey. Each of these was 125 
feet long, or nearly twice the length of the Greek boat, 
and each carried its two vertical propellors on deck, one 
forward and the other aft. Both boats were shipped in 
sections to Constantinople in 1887, but only Nordenfeldt 
II was put together and tried. She w r as one of the 
first submarines to be armed with a bow torpedo-tube for 
discharging Whiteheads, and as a surface torpedo-boat, 
she was a distinct success. But when they tried to navi- 
gate her under water there was a circus. 

No sooner did one of the crew take two steps forward 
in the engine-room than down went the bow. The hot 
w r ater in the boilers and the cold water in the ballast- 
tanks ran downhill, increasing the slant still further. 
English engineers, Turkish sailors, monkey-wrenches, hot 
ashes, Whitehead torpedoes, and other movables came 
tumbling after, till the submarine was nearly standing 
on her head, with everything inside packed into the bow 
like toys in the toe of a Christmas stocking. The little 
vertical propellors pushed and pulled and the crew clawed 
their way aft, till suddenly up came her head, down went 
her tail, and everything went gurgling and clattering 
down to the other end. Nordenfeldt II was a perpetual 
see-saw, and no mortal power could keep her on an even 
keel. Once they succeeded in steadying her long enough 
to fire a torpedo. Where it w r ent to, no man can tell, 
but the sudden lightening of the bow and the recoil of 
the discharge made the submarine rear up and sit down 
so hard that she began to sink stern foremost. The 
water was blown out of her ballast tanks by steam-pres- 
sure, and the main engine started full speed ahead, till 



64 The Story of the Submarine 

she shot up to the surface like a flying-fish. The Turkish 
naval authorities, watching the trials from the shores of 
the Golden Horn, were so impressed by these antics that 
they bought the boat. But it was impossible to keep a 
crew on her, for every native engineer or seaman who 
was sent on board prudently deserted on the first dark 
night. So the Nordenfeldt II rusted away till she fell 
to pieces, long before the Allied fleets began the forcing 
of the Dardanelles. 

Fantastic though their performances seem to us to- 
day, these submarines represent the best work of some of 
the most capable inventors and naval engineers of the 
nineteenth century. With them deserve to be mentioned 
the boats of the Russian Drzew T iecki and the Spaniard 
Peral. Failures though they were, they taught the world 
many valuable lessons about the laws controlling the ac- 
tions of submerged bodies. 

But many of the underwater craft invented between 
1850 and 1900 can be classified only as freaks. Most of 
them, fortunately, were designed but never built, and 
those that were launched miraculously refrained from 
drowning any of their crews. There were submarines 
armed with steam-driven gimlets : the 

" nimble tail, 
Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles, 
Betwixt the ribs of a ship and sinks it straight/' 

that Ben Jonson playfully ascribed to Van Drebel. Dr. 
Lacomme, in 1869, proposed a submarine railroad from 
Calais to Dover, with tracks laid on the bottom of the 
Channel and cars that could cast off their wheels and 



66 The Story of the Submarine 

rise to the surface in case of accident. Lieutenant Andre 
Constantin designed, during the siege of Paris, a boat to 
be submerged by drawing in pistons working in large 
cylinders open to the water. A vessel was actually built 
on this principle in England in 1888, and submerged in 
Tilbury Docks, where the soft mud at the bottom choked 
the cylinders so that the pistons could not be driven out 
again and the boat was brought up with considerable dif- 
ficulty. Two particularly delirious inventors claimed 
that their submarines could also be used as dirigible bal- 
loons. Boucher's underwater boat of 1886 was to have 
gills like a fish, so that it need never rise to the surface 
for air, and was further adorned with spring-buffers on 
the bottom, oars, a propellor under the center of the 
keel, and a movable tail for sculling the vessel forward. 
There were submarines with paddle-wheels, submarines 
with fins, and submarines with wings. A Venezuelan 
dentist, Senor Lacavalerier, invented a double-hulled, 
cigar-shaped boat, whose outer hull was threaded like 
a screw, and by revolving round the fixed inner hull, 
bored its way through the water. But he had been an- 
ticipated and outdone by Apostoloff, a Russian, who not 
only designed a submarine on the same principle but in- 
tended it to carry a large cabin suspended on davits above 
the surface of the water, and declared that his vessel 
would cross the Atlantic at an average speed of in 
knots an hour. 

As late as 1898 the Spanish government, neglecting 
the promising little electric boat built ten years before 
by Senor Peral, was experimenting with two highly 
impossible submarines, one of which was to be propelled 



68 The Story of the Submarine 

by a huge clock-spring, while the other was perfectly 
round. Needless to say, neither the sphere nor the toy 
boat ever encountered the American fleet. 

At the same time, the United States government de- 
clined to accept the war services of the already prac- 
ticable boats of the two American inventors who were 
about to usher in the present era of submarine war- 
fare : Simon Lake and John P. Holland. 



CHAPTER VII 

JOHN ,P. HOLLAND 

WHEN the Merrimac rammed the Cumberland, 
burned the Congress, and was fought to a stand- 
still next day by the little Monitor, all the world realized 
that there had been a revolution in naval warfare. The 
age of the wooden warship was gone forever, the day 
of the ironclad had come. And a twenty-year-old Irish 
school-teacher began to wonder what would be the next 
revolution ; what new craft might be invented that would 
dethrone the ironclad. This young Irishman's name was 
John P. Hollaud, and he decided to devote his life to the 
perfection of the submarine. 

Like Robert Fulton, Admiral Von Tirpitz, and the 
Frenchman who built the Rotterdam Boat in 1652, Hol- 
land relied on submarines to break the power of the 
British fleet. Though born a British subject, in the little 
village of Liscannor, County Clare in the year 1842, he 
had seen too many of his fellow countrymen starved to 
death or driven into exile not to hate the stupid tyranny 
that characterized England's rule of Ireland in those bit- 
ter, far-off days. He longed for the day of Ireland's in- 
dependence, and that day seemed to be brought much 
nearer by the American Civil War.. Not only had many 
thousand brave Irish-Americans become trained veterans 

69 



70 The Story of the Submarine 

but Great Britain and the United States had been brought 
to the verge of war by the sinking of American ships 
by the Alabama and other British-built, Confederate 
commerce-destroyers. When that Anglo-American war 
broke out, there would be an army ready to come over and 
free Ireland — if only the troublesome British navy could 
be put out of the way. And already the English were 
launching ironclad after ironclad to replace their now 
useless steam-frigates and ships-of-the-line. It is no use 
trying to outbuild or outfight the British navy above 




**"* nfl 


\l~^ 
U*** 


jl**- 6 ' 




X+uk. h 



The Holland No. i. Designed to carry a torpedo and fix it to the 
bottom of a ship, on the general principle of Bushnell's Turtle. 
Drawn by Lieutenant F. M. Barber, U. S. N., in 1875. 



water, and John P. Holland realized this in 1862, as sev- 
eral kings and emperors have, before or since. 

Though his friends in Cork kept laughing at him, Hol- 
land worked steadily on his plans for a submarine boat, 
throughout the sixties. Presently he came to America 
and obtained a job as school-teacher in Paterson, New 
Jersey. There he built and launched his first submarine 
in 1875. It was a sharp-pointed, little, cigar-shaped af- 
fair, only sixteen feet long and two feet in diameter 
amidships. This craft was designed to carry a torpedo 
and fix it to the bottom of a ship, on the general principle 



John P. Holland 71 

of BushnelFs Turtle. It was divided into four compart- 
ments, with air-chambers fore and aft. Air-pipes led 
to where Holland sat in the middle, with his head in a 
respirator shaped like a diver's helmet, and his feet work- 
ing pedals that turned the propellor. 

There was nothing revolutionary about this Holland 
No. 1. A similar underwater bicycle is said to have 
been invented by Alvary Templo in 1826, and Drzewiecki 
used one at Odessa in 1877. But Holland used his to 
teach himself how to build something better. Just as 
the Wright brothers learned how to build and fly aero- 
planes by coasting down through the air from the tops 
of the Kitty Hawk sand-hills in their motorless " glider/' 
so John P. Holland found how to make and navigate 
submarines by diving under the surface of the Passaic 
River and adjacent waters, and swimming around there 
in his No. 1 and her successors. 

The Holland No. 2 was launched in 1877 and became 
immediately and prophetically stuck in the mud. She 
had a double hull, the space between being used as a bal- 
last-tank, whose contents leaked constantly into the in- 
terior, and she was driven intermittently by a four horse- 
power petroleum engine of primitive design. After a 
series of trials that entertained his neighbors and taught 
the inventor that the best place for a single horizontal 
rudder is the stern, Holland took the engine out of the 
boat and sank her under the Falls Bridge, where she lies 
to this day. 

He then entered into negotiations with the Fenian 
Brotherhood, a secret society organized for the purpose 
of setting up an Irish republic by militant methods. 



72 The Story of the Submarine 

Though not a Fenian himself, Holland was thoroughly 
in sympathy with the brotherhood, and offered to show 
them how they could get round, or rather under, the 
British navy. You may have seen a once-familiar litho- 
graph of a green-painted super dreadnought of strange 
design flying the Crownless Harp, and named the Irish 
battleship Emerald Isle. The only real Irish warships 
of modern times, however, were the two submarines Hol- 
land persuaded the Fenians to have him build at their 
expense. 

Rear- Admiral Philip Hichborn, former Chief Con- 
structor, U.S.N., said of these two boats: 

" She (the earlier one) was the first submarine since 
Bushnell's time employing water ballast and always re- 
taining buoyancy, in which provision was made to insure 
a fixed center of gravity and a fixed absolute weight. 
Moreover, she was the first buoyant submarine to be 
steered down and up in the vertical plane by horizontal- 
rudder action as she was pushed forward by her motor, 
instead of being pushed up and down by vertical-acting 
mechanism. 1 Her petroleum engine, provided for mo- 
tive-power and for charging her compressed-air flasks, 
was inefficient, and the boat therefore failed as a prac- 
tical craft; but in her were demonstrated all the chief 
principles of successful, brain-directed, submarine navi- 
gation. In 1 88 1, Holland turned out a larger and bet- 
ter boat in which he led the world far and away in the 

1 But Fulton's Nautilus could not possibly have made the dives with 
which she is credited except by the use of the horizontal rudders 
which she possessed in conjunction with the push of her man-power 
propellor. Holland had carefully studied the plans and letters of 
Bushnell and Fulton. 



John P. Holland 



73 



solution of submarine problems, and for a couple of years 
demonstrated that he could perfectly control his craft in 
the vertical plane. Eventually, through financial compli- 
cations, she was taken to New Haven, where she now 



is. 



Political as well as financial complications caused the 



% 








Photo by Brown Bros. 

The Fenian Ram. 
(Photographed by Mr. Simon Lake, in the shed at New Haven.) 

internment of this submarine, which a New York re- 
porter, w 7 ith picturesque inaccuracy, called the Fenian 
Ram. The Irish at home were by this time thinking less 
of fighting for independence and more for peacefully 
obtaining home rule, while the arbitration and payment 
of the " Alabama claims " by Great Britain had removed 
all danger of a war between that country and the United 



74 The Story of the Submarine 

States. Under these circumstances, many of the Fenians 
felt that it was wasted money for their society to spend 
any more of its funds on warships it could never find use 
for. This led to dissensions which culminated in a party 
of Fenians seizing the Ram and taking it to a shed on 
the premises of one of their members at New Haven, 
where it has remained ever since. 

But the construction and performances of this sub- 
marine, and of several others which he soon afterwards 
built for himself, won Holland such a reputation that 
when Secretary Whitney decided in 1888 that submarines 
would be a good thing for the United States navy, the 
great Philadelphia ship-building firm of Cramps sub- 
mitted two designs: Holland's and Nordenfeldt's, and 
the former won the award. But after nearly twelve 
months had been spent in settling preliminary details, and 
when a contract for building an experimental boat was 
just about to be awarded, there came a change of ad- 
ministration and the matter was dropped. 

This was a great disappointment for Holland, and the 
next four or five years were lean ones for the inventor. 
He had built five boats and designed a sixth without their 
having brought him a cent of profit. It was not until 
March 3, 1893, that Congress appropriated the money 
for the construction of an experimental submarine, and 
inventors were invited to submit their designs. By this 
time John P. Holland had not only spent all his own 
money, but all he could borrow from his relatives and 
friends. To make matters worse, the country was then 
passing through a financial panic, when very few people 
had any money to lend or invest. And all the security 



John P. Holland 75 

Holland could offer was his faith in the future of the 
submarine, which at that time was a stock joke of the 
comic papers, together with those other two crack-brained 
projects, the flying-machine and the horseless carriage. 

" I know I can win that competition and build that 
boat for the Government," said Holland to a young law- 
yer whom he had met at lunch in a downtown New 
York restaurant, " if I can only raise the money to pay 
the fees and other expenses. I need exactly $347. 19." 

"What do you want the nineteen cents for?" asked 
the other. 

" To buy a certain kind of ruler I need for drawing my 
plans." 

"If you Ve figured it out as closely as all that," re- 
plied the lawyer, " I '11 take a chance and lend you the 
money." 

He did so, receiving in exchange a large block of stock 
in the new- formed Holland Torpedo-boat Company. 
To-day his stock is worth several million dollars. 

Mr. Holland won the competition and after two years' 
delay his company began the construction of the Plunger. 
This submarine w T as to be propelled by steam while run- 
ning on the surface and by storage-batteries when sub- 
merged. Double propulsion of this type had been first 
installed by a Southerner named Alstitt on a submarine 
he built at Mobile, Alabama, in 1863, and theoretically 
discussed in a book written in 1887 by Commander 
Hovgaard of the Danish navy. Though a great im- 
provement on any type of single propulsion, this system 
had many drawbacks, the chief of which was the length 
of time — from fifteen to thirty minutes — that it took 



76 The Story of the Submarine 

for the oil-burning surface engine to cool and rid itself 
of hot gases before it was safe to seal the funnel and 
dive. Though the Plunger was launched in 1897, s ^ e 
was never finished, for Mr. Holland foresaw T her defects. 
He persuaded the Government to let his company pay 
back the money already spent on the Plunger and build 
an entirely new boat. 

Holland No. 8 was built accordingly, but failed to work 
properly. Finally came the ninth and last of her line, 
the first of the modern submarines, the world-famous 
Holland. 

She was a chunky little .porpoise of a boat, 10 feet 
7 inches deep and only 53 feet 10 inches long, and look- 
ing even shorter and thicker than she was because of 
the narrow, comb-like superstructure running fore and 
aft along the deck. But her shape and dimensions were 
the results of twenty-five years' experience. Built at 
Mr. Lewis Nixon's shipyards at Elizabethport, New Jer- 
sey, the Holland was launched in the early spring of 1898, 
between the blowing-up of the Maine and the outbreak 
of the Spanish- American War. But though John P. 
Holland repeatedly begged to be allowed to take his sub- 
marine into Santiago Harbor and torpedo Cervera's fleet, 
the naval authorities at Washington were too conserva- 
tive-minded to let him try. 

" United States warship goes down with all hands ! " 
the small boys (I was one of them) used to shout at 
this time, and then explain that it was only another dive 
of the " Holland submarine." Strictly speaking, the 
Holland w T as not a United States warship till October 
13, 1900, when she was formally placed in commission 



78 The Story of the Submarine 

under the command of Lieutenant Harry H. Caldwell, 
who had been on her during many of the exhaustive series 
of trials in which the little undersea destroyer proved to 
even the most conservative officers of our navy that the 
day of the submarine had come at last. 

Propelled on the surface by a fifty horse-power gaso- 
line motor, the Holland had a cruising radius of 1500 
miles at a speed of seven knots an hour. Submerged, 
she was driven by electric storage-batteries. This effec- 
tive combination of oil-engines with an electric motor is 
one of John P. Holland's great discoveries, and is used 
in every submarine to-day. When her tanks were filled 
till her deck was flush with the water, and the two hori- 
zontal rudders at the stern began to steer her down- 
wards, the Holland Could dive to a depth of twenty-eight 
feet in five seconds. She had no periscope, for that in- 
strument was then crude and unsatisfactory. To take 
aim, the captain of the Holland had to make a quick 
" porpoise dive," up to the surface and down again, ex- 
posing the conning-tower for the few seconds needed to 
take aim and judge the distance to the target. Though 
by this means the Holland succeeded in getting within 
striking-distance of the Kearsarge and the New York 
without being detected, during the summer manoeuvers 
of the Atlantic fleet off Newport in 1900, it has proved 
fatal to the only submarine that has tried it in actual 
warfare (see page 160). 

Less than half the length of the Nordenfeldt II, the 
Holland did not pitch or see-saw when submerged. 
Each of her crew of six sat on a low stool beside the 
machinery he was to operate, and there was no moving 



John P. Holland 79 

about when below the surface. Neither did the boat 
stand on her tail when a torpedo was discharged from 
the bow-tube, for the loss of weight was immediately 
compensated by admitting an equivalent amount of water 
into a tank. Originally the Holland had a stern torpedo- 
tube as well, besides a pneumatic gun for throwing eighty 
pounds of dynamite half a mile through the air, but these 
were later removed. 

How the Holland impressed our naval officers at that 
time is best shown in the oft-quoted testimony of Ad- 
miral Dewey before the naval committee of the House of 
Representatives in 1900. 

" Gentlemen, I saw the operation of the boat down off 
Mount Vernon the other day. Several members of this 
committee were there. I think we were all very much 
impressed with its performance. My aid, Lieutenant 
Caldwell, was on board. The boat did everything that 
the owners proposed to do. I said then, and I have said 
it since, that if they had had two of those things at 
Manila, I could never have held it with the squadron I 
had. The moral effect — to my mind, it is infinitely su- 
perior to mines or torpedoes or anything of the kind. 
With those craft moving under water it would wear 
people out. With two of those in Galveston all the navies 
of the world could not blockade the place." 

The Holland was purchased by the United States Gov- 
ernment on April 11, 1900, for $150,000. She had cost 
her builders, exclusive of any office expenses or salaries 
of officers, $236,615.43. But it had been a profitable in- 
vestment for the Holland Torpedo-boat Company, for 
on August 25, the United States navy contracted with 



80 The Story of the Submarine 

it for the construction of six more submarines. And in 
the autumn of the same year, though it was not an- 
nounced to the public till March i, 1901, five other 




Photo by Brown Bros. 



John P. Holland. 



Hollands were ordered through the agency of Vickers 
Sons, and Maxim by the British admiralty. Soon every 
maritime nation was either buying Hollands or paying 



John P. Holland 81 

royalties on the inventor's patents, and building bigger, 
faster, better submarines every year. 

The original Holland had outlived her fighting value 
when she was condemned by Secretary Daniels in June, 
191 5, to be broken up and sold as junk. There is still 
room in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for that worthless 
and meaningless relic, the Intelligent Whale, but there 
was none for the Holland submarine, w^hose place in his- 
tory is w T ith the Clair mont and the Monitor, 

John P. Holland withdrew in 1904 from the Holland 
Torpedo-boat Company, which has since become merged 
with the Electric Boat Company, that builds most of the 
submarines for the United States navy, and many for 
the navies of foreign powers. Like most other great 
inventive geniuses, Holland was not a trained engineer, 
and it was perhaps inevitable that disputes should have 
arisen between him and his associates as to the carrying 
out of his ideas. His last years were embittered by the 
belief that the submarines of to-day were distorted and 
worthless developments of his original type. Whether 
or not he was mistaken, only time can tell. That to 
John P. Holland, more than to any other man since 
David Bushnell and Robert Fulton, the world owes the 
modern submarine, cannot be denied. His death, on 
August 12, 19 14, was but little noticed in the turmoil 
and confusion of the first weeks of the great European 
War. But when the naval histories of that war are 
written, his name will not be forgotten. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE LAKE SUBMARINES 

JOHN P. HOLLAND was not the only inventor who 
responded to the invitation of the United States navy 
department to submit designs for a proposed submarine 
boat in 1893. That invitation had been issued and an 
appropriation of $200,000 made by Congress on the 
recommendation of Commander Folger, chief of ord- 
nance, after he had seen a trial trip on Lake Michigan 
of an underwater boat invented by Mr. George C. Baker. 
This was an egg-shaped craft, propelled by a steam en- 
gine on the surface and storage-batteries when sub- 
merged, and controlled by two adjustable propellers, 
mounted on either side of the boat on a shaft running 
athwartship. These screws could be turned in any direc- 
tion, so as to push or pull the vessel forward, downward, 
or at any desired angle. Mr. Baker submitted designs 
for a larger boat of the same kind, but they were not 
accepted. 

The third inventor who entered the 1893 competition 
was Mr. Simon Lake, then a resident of Baltimore. He 
sent in the plans of the most astonishing-looking craft 
that had startled the eyes of the navy department since 
Ericsson's original monitor. It had two cigar-shaped 
hulls, one inside the other, the space between being used 
for ballast-tanks. It had no less than five propellors: 

82 



The Lake Submarines 83 

twin screws aft for propulsion, a single screw working 
in an open transverse tunnel forward, 1 to " swing the 
vessel at rest to facilitate pointing her torpedos," and two 
downhaul or vertical-acting propellers "for holding vessel 
to depth when not under way." These were not placed 
on deck, as on the Nordenfeldt II, but in slots in the 
keel. Other features of the bottom were two anchor 

Submerged W.L. ,''"9t 



Depth Regulating Vane* 



T-. : 



IN 



tt.„ .; &r^ cz 5= .± 



Depth Regulating 
M .' Vane Level Vane 



-^U 



Light W.L. y / l---r^- .i=*i y ' * — "^ifr-*---- I'^T^^ 



Courtesy International Marine Engineering. 

Lake 1893 Design as Submitted to the U. S. Navy Department. 

weights, a detachable " emergency keel," and a diving 
compartment. On deck were a folding periscope and 
a " gun arranged in watertight, revolving turret for de- 
fense purposes or attack on unarmored surface craft." 
There were four torpedo tubes, two forward and two aft, 
according to the modern German practice. The motive 
power was the then usual combination of steam and stor- 
age batteries. But the two remaining features of the 
1893 model Lake submarine were extremely unusual. 

Instead of one pair of horizontal rudders, there were 
four pairs, two large and two small. The latter, placed 
near the bow and stern, were " levelling vanes, designed 
automatically to hold the vessel on a level keel when under 

1 Mr. J. F. Waddington used vertical propellers in tubes through 
the vessel for keeping her on an even keel or submerging when 
stationary, on a small electric submarine he invented, built and 
demonstrated at Liverpool in 1886. 



84 The Story of the Submarine 



way " ; while the larger ones were called " hydroplanes " 
and so located and designed as to steer the submarine 
under, not by making it dive bow foremost but by caus- 




Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake. 



The Argonaut Junior. 



ing it to submerge on an even keel. How this was to be 
accomplished will be explained presently. The other new 
thing about the Lake boat was that it was mounted on 
wheels for running along the sea-bottom. There were 
three of these wheels : a large pair forward on a strong 
axle for bearing the vessel's weight, and a small steering- 
wheel on the bottom of the rudder. 



The Lake Submarines 85 

This submarine was never built, however, for the 
congressional appropriation was awarded to the Holland 
Torpedo-boat Company and Mr. Lake had at that time 
no means for building so elaborate a vessel by himself. 
What he did build was the simplest and crudest little 
submarine imaginable: the Argonaut Jr. She was a 
triangular box of yellow pine, fourteen feet long and five 
feet deep, mounted on three solid wooden wheels. She 
was trundled along the bottom of Sandy Hook Bay by 
one or two men cranking the axle of the two driving 
wheels. The boat was provided with an air-lock and 
diver's compartment " so arranged that by putting an 
air pressure on the diver's compartment equal to the water 
pressure outside, a bottom door could be opened and no 
water would come into the vessel. Then by putting on 
a pair of rubber boots the operator could walk around 
on the sea bottom and push the boat along with him and 
pick up objects, such as clams, oysters, etc., from the 
sea bottom." 2 

Enough people were convinced by the performances 
of this simple craft of the soundness of Mr. Lake's the- 
ories that the inventor was able to raise sufficient capital 
to build a larger submarine. This boat, which was de- 
signed in 1895 and built at Baltimore in 1897, was called 
the Argonaut. When launched, she had a cigar-shaped 
hull thirty-six feet long by nine in diameter, mounted on 
a pair of large toothed driving-wheels forward and a 
guiding-wheel on the rudder. The driving-wheels could 

2 Quotations in this chapter are from Mr. Lake's articles published 
in " International Marine Engineering," and are here reprinted by 
his kind permission. 



86 The Story of the Submarine 

be disconnected and left to revolve freely while the boat 
was driven by its single-screw propeller. There was a 
diver's compartment in the bottom and a " lookout com- 
partment in the extreme bow, with a powerful searchlight 
to light up a pathway in front of her as she moved along 
over the waterbed. The searchlight I later found of 
little value except for night work in clear water. In clear 
water the sunlight would permit of as good vision without 
the use of the light as with it, while if the water was 
not clear, no amount of light would permit of vision 
through it for any considerable distance." 

Storage batteries were carried only for working the 
searchlight and illuminating the interior of the boat. The 
Argonaut was propelled, both above and below the sur- 
face, by a thirty horse-power gasoline engine, the first 
one to be installed in a submarine. There was enough 
air to run it on, even when submerged, because the 
Argonaut was ventilated through a hose running to a float 
on the surface: a device later changed to two pipe masts 
long enough to let her run along the bottom at a depth 
of fifty feet. 

The Argonaut had no hydroplanes or horizontal rud- 
ders of any kind. She was submerged, like the Intelligent 
Whale, by " two anchor weights, each weighing iooo 
pounds, attached to cables, and capable of being hauled up 
or lowered by a drum and mechanism within the boat. . . . 
When it is desired to submerge the vessel the anchor 
weights are first knvered to the bottom; water is then 
allowed to enter the water-ballast compartments until her 
buoyancy is less than the weight of the two anchors, say 
1500 pounds; the cables connecting with the weights are 



The Lake Submarines 



87 



then hauled in, and the vessel is thus hauled to the bot- 
tom, until she comes to rest on her three wheels. The 
weights are then hauled into their pockets in the keel, and 
it is evident that she is resting on the wheels with a weight 
equal to the difference between her buoyancy with the 
weights at the bottom, and the weights in their pockets, 
or 500 pounds Now this weight may be increased or 
diminished, either by admitting more water into the bal- 



IWWWWWWWL 




Courtesy of International Marine Engineering. 

Argonaut as Originally Built. 



last tanks or by pumping some out. Thus it will be seen 
that we have perfect control of the vessel in submerging 
her, as we may haul her down as fast or as slow as we 
please, and by having her rest on the bottom with sufficient 
weight to prevent the currents from moving her out of her 
course we may start up our propeller or driving-wheels 
and drive her at will over the bottom, the same as a tricycle 
is propelled on the surface of the earth in the upper air. 



88 The Story of the Submarine 

In muddy bottoms, we rest with a weight not much over 
ioo pounds; while on hard bottoms, or where there are 
strong currents, we sometimes rest on the bottom with 
a weight of from iooo to 1500 pounds. . . . 

" In the rivers we invariably found a muddy bed ; in 
Chesapeake Bay we found bottoms of various kinds, 
in some places so soft that our divers would sink up to 
their knees, while in other places the ground would be 
hard, and at one place we ran across a bottom which 
was composed of a loose gravel, resembling shelled corn. 
Out in the ocean, however, was found the ideal 
submarine course, consisting of a fine gray sand, almost 
as hard as a macadamized road, and very level and uni- 
form." 

During this cruise under the waters of Chesapeake Bay, 
the Argonaut came on the wrecks of several sunken ves- 
sels, which Mr. Lake or some member of his crew ex- 
amined through the open door in the bottom of the diving- 
compartment. The air inside was kept at a sufficiently 
high pressure to keep the water from entering, and the 
man in the submarine could pull up pieces of the wreck 
with a short boathook, or even reach down and place his 
bare hand on the back of a big fish swimming past. Some- 
times members of the crew would put on diving-suits and 
walk out over the bottom, keeping in communication with 
the boat by telephone. Telephone stations were even es- 
tablished on the bottom of the bay, with cables running to 
the nearest exchange on shore, and conversations were 
held with people in Baltimore, Washington, and New 
York. (Perhaps the commanders of German submarines 
in British waters to-day are using this method to com- 



The Lake Submarines 89 

municate with German spies in London, Dublin, and Liv- 
erpool. ) 

The Spanish-American War was being fought while 
Mr. Lake was making these experiments. The entrance 
to Hampton Roads was planted with electric mines, but 
though he was forbidden to go too near them, the in- 
ventor proved that nothing would be easier than to locate 
the cable connecting them with the shore, haul it up into 
the diver's compartment of the Argonaut and cut it. He 
did this with a dummy cable of his own, and then re- 
peatedly begged the navy department to let him take the 
Argonaut into the harbor of Santiago de Cuba and disable 
the mines that were keeping Admiral Sampson's fleet from 
going in and smashing the Spanish squadron there. But 
his offer, like that of John P. Holland, was refused. 

" In 1898, also," says Mr. Lake, " the Argonaut made 
the trip from Norfolk to New York under her own power 
and unescorted. In her original form she was a cigar- 
shaped craft with only a small percentage of reserve buoy- 
ancy in her surface cruising condition. We were caught 
out in the severe November northeast storm of 1898 in 
which over two hundred vessels were lost and we did not 
succeed in reaching a harbor in the ' horseshoe ' back of 
Sandy Hook until three o'clock in the morning. The seas 
were so rough they would break over her conning-tower 
in such masses I was obliged to lash myself fast to 
prevent being swept overboard. It was freezing weather 
and I was soaked and covered with ice on reaching har- 
bor." 

Mr. Lake then sent the Argonaut to a Brooklyn ship- 
yard, where her original cigar-shaped hull was cut in half, 



90 The Story of the Submarine 

and lengthened twenty feet, after which a light ship- 
shaped superstructure was built over her low sloping top- 
sides. To keep it from being crushed in by water pres- 
sure when submerged, scupper-like openings were cut in 
the thin plating where it joined the stout, pressure-resist- 
ing hull, so that the superstructure automatically filled 
itself with sea- water on submerging and drained itself on 
rising again. Though uninhabitable, its interior supplied 
useful storage space, particularly for the gasoline fuel 
tanks, which, as Mr. Lake had already discovered, gave 




Courtesy of International Marine Engineering. 

Argonaut as Rebuilt. 



off fumes that soon rendered the air inside the submarine 
unbreathable, unless the tanks were kept outside instead 
of inside the hull. The swan-bow and long bowsprit of 
the new superstructure, together with the two ventilator- 
masts, gave the rebuilt Argonaut a schooner-like appear- 
ance, and her bowsprit has been compared to the whip- 
socket on the dashboard of the earliest automobiles. 
But Mr. Lake declares that this was no useless leftover 
but a practicable spring-buffer to guard against running 
into submerged rocks, while the bobstay helped the Ar- 



The Lake Submarines 91 

gonaut to climb over the obstruction, as she could over 
anything on the sea-bottom she could get her bows over. 

Primarily, the superstructure served to make the sub- 
marine more seaworthy as a surface-craft. Until then, 
most inventors and designers of undersea boats had con- 
fined their attentions to the problems of underwater navi- 
gation only, because, as had been pointed out by the monk 
Mersenne before 1648, even during the most violent 
storms the disturbance is felt but a little distance below 
the surface. But Mr. Lake realized that a submarine, 
like every other kind of boat, spends most of its existence 
on top of the water and that it is not always desirable to 
submerge whenever a moderate-sized wave sweeps over 
one of the old-fashioned, low-lying, cigar-shaped vessels. 
With her new superstructure, the Argonaut rode the 
waves as lightly as any yacht and ushered in the era 
of the sea-going submarine. 

It was not until a year later that the Narval, a large 
double-hulled submarine with a ship-shaped outer shell of 
light, perforated plating, was launched in France. She 
was propelled by steam on the surface and by storage bat- 
teries when submerged. To distinguish this sea-going 
torpedo-boat, that could be submerged, from the earlier 
and simpler submarines designed and engined for under- 
water work only, her designer, M. Labeuf, called the 
Narval a " submersible." As the old type of boat soon 
became extinct, the distinction was not necessary and the 
old name " submarine " is still applied to all underwater 
craft. That Simon Lake and not M. Labeuf first gave 
the modern sea-going submarine its characteristic and es- 
sential superstructure is easily proved by dates. The 



92 The Story of the Submarine 

Narval was launched in October, 1899, the Argonaut was 
remodeled in December, 1898, and on April 2, 1897, Mr. 
Lake applied for and was presently granted the pioneer 
patent on a " combined surface and submarine vessel," 
the space between its cylindrical hull and the superstruc- 
ture " being adapted to be filled with water when the ves- 
sel is submerged and thus rendered capable of resisting 
the pressure of the water." 

But though in her remodeled form she became the 
forerunner of the long grim submarine cruisers of to-day, 
the Argonaut herself had been built to serve not as a 
warship but as a commercial vessel. Like her namesakes 
who followed Jason in the Argo to far-off Colchis for 
the Golden Fleece, she was to go forth in search of hid- 
den treasure. She was to have been the first of a fleet 
of wheeled bottom-workers, salvaging the cargoes of 
wrecked ships ; from the mail-bags of the latest lost liner 
to ingots and pieces-of -eight from the sand-clogged hulks 
of long-sunk Spanish galleons, or bringing up sponges, 
coral, and pearls from the depths of the tropic seas. 
But though he investigated a few wrecks and ingeniously 
transferred a few tons of coal from one into a sub- 
marine lighter by means of a pipe-line and a powerful 
force-pump, Mr. Lake has done nothing more to develop 
the fascinating commercial possibilities of the submarine 
since 1901, because he has been kept too busy building 
undersea warships for the United States and other naval 
powers. 

Mr. Lake declares that one of his up-to-date wheeled 
submarines could enter a harbor-mouth defended by 
booms and nettings that would keep out either surface 



94 The Story of the Submarine 

torpedo boats or ordinary submarines. The smooth- 
backed bottom-worker of this special type would slip un- 
der the netting like a cat under a bead portiere. If the 
netting were fastened down, a diver would step out 
through the door in the bottom of the submarine and 
either cut the netting from its moorings or attach a bomb 




Courtesy of Mr. Simon Lake. 

Cross-section of Diving-compartment on a Lake Submarine. 

to blow a hole for the bottom-worker to go in through. 
An ordinary submarine, entering a hostile harbor, would 
be in constant danger of running aground in shallow water 
and either sticking there or rebounding to the surface, 
to be seen and fired at by the enemy. Even if its com- 
mander succeeded in keeping to the deep channel by 
dead reckoning — a process akin to flying blindfolded in 



The Lake Submarines 95 

an aeroplane up a crooked ravine and remembering just 
when and where to turn — even if he dodged the rocks 
and sand bars, he would be liable to bump the nose of his 
boat against an anchored contact mine( see Chapter XI). 
But the Lake bottom-worker would trundle steadily along, 
sampling the bottom to find where it was, and passing 
safely under the mines floating far above it. The divers 
would make short work of cutting the mine cables, or they 
might plant mines of their own under the ships in the 
harbor and blow them up as Bushnell tried to. Using 
electric motors and storage air-flasks, with no pipe masts 
or other " surface-indications " to betray its presence, 
one of these boats could remain snugly hid at the bot- 
tom of an enemy's harbor as long as its supplies held out. 

As yet, however, we have not heard of any such ex- 
ploits in the present war, though they seem perfectly 
feasible. Mr. Lake sold a boat designed for this sort of 
work and called the Protector to Russia in 1906. 

The most characteristic feature of the Lake submarines 
is not the wheels, which are found only on those specially 
designed for bottom working, but the hydroplanes. 
These are horizontal rudders that are so placed and de- 
signed as to steer the boat forward and downward, but 
at the same time keeping it on an even keel. Bushnell 
and Nordenfeldt forced their boats straight up and dow r n 
like buckets in a well, John P. Holland made his tip 
up its tail and dive like a loon, but Mr. Lake conceived the 
idea of having his boat descend like a suitcase carried by 
a man walking down-stairs : the suitcase moves steadily 
forward and downward towards the front door but it re- 
mains level. The first method with its vertical propel- 



96 The Story of the Submarine 

lers wasted too much energy, the second incurred the risk 
of diving too fast and too deep, no matter whether the 
single pair of horizontal rudders were placed on the 
bow, or amidships, or on the stern. So Mr. Lake used 
two pairs of horizontal rudders " located at equal dis- 
tances forward and aft of the center of gravity and buoy- 
ancy of the vessel when in the submerged condition, so as 
not to disturb the trim of the vessel when the planes were 
inclined down or up to cause the vessel to submerge or 
rise when under way." These he called hydroplanes, to 
distinguish them from another set of smaller horizontal 
rudders, which at first he called " leveling-vanes " and 
which were not used to steer the submarine under but 
manipulated to keep her at a constant depth and on a level 
keel while running submerged. 

In theory, the early Lake boats were submerged on an 
even keel ; in practice, they went under at an angle of sev- 
eral degrees. But they made nothing like the abrupt 
dives of the Holland. 

"As the Electric Boat Company s boats (Holland 
type) increased in size," declares Chief Constructor D. 
W. Taylor, U.S.N., " bow rudders were fitted, and nowa- 
days all submarines of this type in our navy are fitted 
with bow rudders as well as stern rudders. The Lake 
type submarines are still fitted with hydroplanes. But as 
you may see, means for effecting submergence have ap- 
proached each other very closely: in fact, speaking gen- 
erally, submarines all over the world now have two or 
more sets of diving-rudders; the most general arrange- 
ment is one pair forward and one pair aft; in some types 



The Lake Submarines 



97 



three pairs are fitted, but this arrangement is more un- 
usual. 

" In general it may be said then that modern sub- 
marines of both types submerge in practically the same 
way. They assume a very slight angle of inclination, say 
a degree and a half or two degrees, and submerge at this 
angle. This may be said to be practically on an even 
keel/' 




Courtesy of International Marine Engineering. 

Cross-section of the Protector, showing wheels stowed away 
when not running on the sea bottom. 

The credit of originating this now world-wide practice 
of " level-keel submergence " obviously belongs, as 
" Who 's Who in America " gives it, to 

" Lake, Simon, naval architect, mechanical engineer. 
Born at Pleasantville, New Jersey, September 4, 1866; 
son of John Christopher and Miriam M. (Adams) Lake; 
educated at Clinton Liberal Institute, Fort Plain, New 
York, and Franklin Institute, Philadelphia; married 
Margaret Vogel of Baltimore, June 9, 1890. Inventor of 
even keel type of submarine torpedo boats; built first ex- 



98 The Story of the Submarine 

perimental boat, 1894; built Argonaut, 1897 (first sub- 
marine to operate successfully in the open sea) ; has de- 
signed and built many submarine torpedo boats for the 
United States and foreign countries; spent several years 




Mr. Simon Lake. 

in Russia, Germany, and England, designing, building, 
and acting in an advisory capacity in construction of sub- 
marine boats. Also inventor of submarine apparatus for 
locating and recovering sunken vessels and their cargoes ; 
submarine apparatus for pearl and sponge fishing, heavy 



The Lake Submarines 99 

oil internal combustion engine for marine propulsion, etc. 
Member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine 
Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 
American Society of Naval Engineers, Institute of Naval 
Architects (London) , Schffsbautechnische Gesellschaft 
(Berlin). Mason. Clubs, Engineers' (New York), Al- 
gonquin, (Bridgeport, Connecticut). Home, Milford, 
Connecticut. Office, Bridgeport, Connecticut." 

AYhen the Krupps first took up the idea of constructing 
submarines for the German and Russian governments, 
the great German firm consulted with Mr. Lake, who was 
at that time living in Europe. An elaborate contract was 
drawn up between them. The Krupps agreed to employ 
Mr. Lake in an advisory capacity and to build " Lake 
type " boats, both in Russia, where they were to erect a 
factory and share the profits with him, and in Germany, 
on a royalty basis. Before he could sign this contract, 
Mr. Lake had to obtain the permission of the directors 
of his own company in Bridgeport. In the meanwhile, 
he gave the German company his most secret plans and 
specifications. But the Krupps never signed the contract, 
withdrew from going into Russia, and their lawyer coolly 
told Mr. Lake that, as he had failed to patent his inven- 
tions in Germany, his clients were perfectly free to build 
" Lake type " submarines there without paying him any- 
thing and were going to do so. 

The famous Krupp-built German submarines that are 
playing so prominent a part in the present war are there- 
fore partly of American design. Whenever Mr. Lake 
reads that another one of them has been destroyed by the 
Allies, his emotions must be rather mixed. 



CHAPTER IX 

A TRIP IN A MODERN SUBMARINE 

LIEUTENANT PERRY SCOPE, commanding the 
X-class flotilla, was sitting in his comfortable little 
office on the mother-ship Ozark, when I entered with a 
letter from the secretary of the navy, giving me permis- 
sion to go on board a United States submarine. With- 
out such authorization no civilian may set foot on the 
narrow decks of our undersea destroyers, though he may 
visit a battleship with no more formality than walking 
into a public park. 

" We 're too small and full of machinery to hold a 
crowd/' explained the lieutenant, " and the crowd 
would n't enjoy it if they came. No nice white decks for 
the girls to dance on or fourteen-inch guns for them to 
sit on while they have their pictures taken. Besides, 
everything's oily — you'd better put on a suit of over- 
alls instead of those white flannels." 

There were plenty of spare overalls on the Ozark, for 
she was the mother-ship of a family of six young sub- 
marines. Built as a coast defense monitor shortly after 
the Spanish War, she had long since been retired from the 
fighting-line, and was now the floating headquarters, dor- 
mitory, hospital, machine-shop, bakery, and general store 
for the six officers and the hundred and fifty men of the 

flotilla. 

ioo 



o 



to 




w 



102 The Story of the Submarine 

Moored alongside the parent-ship, the submarine X-4 
was filling her fuel-tanks with oil through a pipe-line, in 
preparation for the day's cruise and target-practice I was 
to be lucky enough to witness. Two hundred and fifty 
feet long, flat-decked and straight-stemmed, she looked, 
except for the lack of funnels, much more like a surface- 
going torpedo-boat than the landsman's conventional idea 
of a submarine. 

" I thought she would be cigar-shaped," I said as we 
went on board. 

" She is — underneath," answered Lieutenant Scope. 
" What you see is only a light-weight superstructure or 
false hull built over the real one. See those holes in it, 
just above the water line? They are to flood the super- 
structure with whenever we submerge, otherwise the 
water pressure would crush in these thin steel plates like 
veneering. But it makes us much more seaworthy for 
surface work, gives us a certain amount of deckroom, 
and stowage-space for various useful articles, such as 
this." 

Part of the deck rose straight up into the air, like the 
top of a freight-elevator coming up through the side- 
walk. Beneath the canopy thus formed was a short-bar- 
reled, three-inch gun. 

" Fires a twelve-pound shell, like the field-pieces the 
landing-parties take ashore from the battleships," ex- 
plained the naval officer, as he trained the vicious-looking 
little cannon all around the compass. " Small enough to 
be handy, big enough to sink any merchant ship afloat, 
or smash anything that flies." 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 103 

Here he pointed the muzzle straight up as if gunning 
for hostile aeroplanes. 

" And please observe/' he concluded, as the gun 
sank down into its lair again, " how that armored hatch- 
cover protects the gun-crew from shrapnel or falling 
bombs.'-' 

I followed him to the conning-tower, or, as he always 
spoke of it, the turret. The little round bandbox of the 
Holland has developed into a tall, tapering structure, 
sharply pointed fore and aft to lessen resistance when run- 
ning submerged. Above the turret was a small navigat- 
ing-bridge, screened and roofed with canvas, where a red- 
haired quartermaster stood by the steering-wheel, and 
saluted as we came up the ladder. The lieutenant put the 
engine-room telegraph over to " Start," and a mighty 
motor throbbed underneath our feet. Then the mooring 
was cast off, the telegraph put over to " Slow Ahead," 
and the X-4 put out to sea. 

" How long a cruise could she make? " I asked. 

" Four thousand miles is her radius," answered her 
commander. " Back in 191 5, ten American-designed sub- 
marines crossed from Canada to England under their 
own power." 

" Yet it is only a few years since we were told that 
submarines could only be used for coast defense, unless 
they were carried inside their mother-ships and launched 
near the scene of battle," I remarked. " Or that each 
battleship should carry a dinky little submarine on deck 
and lower it over the side like a steam-launch." 

" People said the same thing about torpedo-boats," 



104 The Story of the Submarine 

agreed the lieutenant ; " they began as launches — now 
look at the size of that destroyer smoking along over 
there. Ericsson thought that any ironclad bigger than a 
Civil War monitor would be an unwieldy monster. Even 
John P. Holland fought tooth and nail against increasing 
the length of his submarines. This boat of mine is five 
times the length of the old Holland, but she 's only a 
primitive ancestor of the perfect submarine of the fu- 
ture." 

" She is n't a submarine at all," I replied presently, as 
the X-4 swept on down the coast at a good twenty-two 
knots, her foredeck buried in foam and the sea-breeze 
singing through the antennae of her wireless. " She 's 
nothing but a big motor-boat." 

" And she 's got some big motors," replied the lieuten- 
ant. " Better step below and have a look at them." 

I went down through the open hatchway to the interior 
of the boat and aft to the engine-room. There I found 
two long, many-cylindered oil-engines of strange design, 
presided over by a big blond engineer whose grease- 
spotted dungarees gave no hint as to his rating. 

" What kind of machines are these? " I shouted above 
the roar they made. " And why do you need two of 
them?" 

" Diesel heavy-oil engines," he answered. " One for 
each propeller." 

" What is the difference between one of these and the 
gasoline engine of a motor-car? I know a little about 
that." 

"Do you know what the carburetor is?" asked the 
engineer. 



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106 The Story of the Submarine 

" That 's where the gasoline is mixed with air, before 
it goes into the cylinder." 

The engineer nodded. 

" The mixture is sucked into the cylinder by the down- 
stroke of the piston. The up-stroke compresses it, and 
then the mixture is exploded by an electric spark from the 
spark-plug. The force of the explosion drives the pis- 
ton down, and the next stroke up drives out the refuse 
gases. That 's how an ordinary, four-cycle gasoline 
motor works. 

" But the Diesel engine/' he continued, " does n't need 
any carburetor or spark-plug. When the piston makes 
its first upward or compression-stroke, there is nothing in 
the cylinder but pure air. This is compressed to a pres- 
sure of about 500 pounds a square inch — and when you 
squeeze anything as hard as that, you make it mighty 
hot — " 

" Like a blacksmith pounding a piece of cold iron 
to a red heat?" I suggested. The engineer nodded 
again. 

" That compressed air is so hot that the oil which has 
been spurted in through an injection-valve is exploded, 
and drives the piston down on the power-stroke. The 
waste gases are then blown out by compressed air. There 
are an air-compressor and a storage tank just for scaveng- 
ing, or blowing the waste gases out of every three power- 
cylinders." 

" What are the advantages of the Diesel over the gaso- 
line engine? " 

" In the first place, it gives more power. You see, 
three out of every four strokes made by the piston of a 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 107 

gasoline engine — suction-stroke, compression-stroke, and 
scavenging-stroke — waste power instead of producing it. 
But the Diesel is what we call a two-cycle engine ; its 
piston makes only two trips for each power-stroke. In 
the second place, it is cheaper, because instead of gasoline 
it uses heavy, low-price oil. And this makes it much 
safer, for the heavy oil does not vaporize so easily. The 




Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company 



Auxiliary Switchboard and Electric Cook-stove, in a U. S. 
Submarine. 



air in some of the old submarines that used gasoline 
motors would get so that it was like trying to breathe in- 
side a carburetor, and there was always the chance of a 
spark from the electric motors exploding the whole 
business, and your waking up to find the trained nurse 
changing your bandages. The German navy refused to 
build a submarine as long as there was nothing better 
than gasoline to propel it on the surface. They did n't 



108 The Story of the Submarine 

launch their U-i till 1906, after Dr. Diesel had got his 
motor into practicable shape. It cost him twenty years 
of hard work, but without his motor we could n't have 
the modern submarine. And they 're using it more and 
more in ocean freighters. There 's a line of motor-ships 
running to-day between Scandinavia and San Francisco, 
through the Panama Canal. 

" Aft of the Diesel, here," continued the engineer, " is 
our electric motor, for propelling her when submerged. 
Reverse it and have it driven by the Diesel engine, and the 
motor serves as a dynamo to generate electricity for charg- 
ing the batteries. As long as we can get oil and come to 
the surface to use it, we can never run short of ' juice.' * 

" Besides turning the propeller, the electricity from the 
batteries lights the boat, and turns the ventilating fans, 
works the air-compressor for the torpedo-tubes, drives all 
the big and little pumps, runs a lot of auxiliary motors 
that haul up the anchor, turn the rudders, and do other 
odd jobs, it heats the boat in cold weather — " 

" And cooks the grub all the year round, don't forget 
that, Joe," said another member of the crew. " Luncheon 
is served in the palm room." 

We ate from a swinging table let down from the ceil- 
ing of the main- or living-compartment of the submarine, 
that extended forward from the engine-room to the tiny 
officers' cabin and the torpedo room in the bows. Tiers 
of canvas bunks folded up against the walls showed where 
the crew slept when on a cruise. For lunch that day we 
had bread baked on the mother-ship, butter out of a can, 
fried ham, fried potatoes, and coffee hot from a little 

1 Electric current. 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 109 

electric stove such as you can see in the kitchenette of a 
light-housekeeping apartment on shore. The lieutenant's 
lunch was carried up to him on the bridge. When the 
meal was over, most of the men went on deck, and my 
friend the engineer put a large cigar in his mouth. I 




Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. 

Forward deck of a U. S. Submarine, in cruising trim. 

took out a box of matches and was about to strike one 
for his benefit when he stopped me, saying, 

" Don't ever strike a light in a submarine or a dyna- 
mite factory. It 's unhealthy." 

I apologized profusely. 

" The air is so much better than I had expected that 
I forgot where I was." 

" Yes," said the engineer, chewing his unlighted cigar, 
" there is plenty of good air in a big modern boat like 
this, running on the surface in calm weather and with 



110 The Story of the Submarine 

the main hatch and all ventilators open. But come with 
us when we 're bucking high seas or running submerged 
on a breathing-diet of canned air flavored with oil, and 
you '11 understand why so many good men have been in- 
valided out of the flotilla with lung-trouble. We 're the 
only warships without any dogs or parrots or other mas- 
cots on board, for no animal could endure the air in 
a submarine." 




Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. 

Same, preparing to submerge. Railing stowed away and 
bow-rudders extended. 

" I thought every submarine carried a cage of white 
mice, because they began to squeak as soon as the air 
began to get bad and so warned the crew." 

" That was a crude device of the early days," replied 
the engineer. " We don't carry white mice any more, 
though I believe they still use them in the British navy." 

I went up on deck, to find that the X-4 had reached 
the practice-grounds and was being made ready for a 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 1 1 1 

dive. Her crew were busy dismantling and stowing away 
the bridge and the light deck-railing, hauling down the 
flag, and closing all ventilators and other openings. 

" How long has it taken you to get ready? " I asked 
Lieutenant Scope. 

" Twenty minutes/' he answered. " But the real div- 
ing takes only two minutes. We '11 go below now, sink 
her to condition, and run her under with the diving rud- 
ders." 

" What are those things unfolding themselves on either 
side of the bows? " I asked. " I thought the diving rud- 
ders were carried astern." 

" Modern submarines are so long that they need them 
both fore and aft," replied the lieutenant. " As you see, 
the diving rudders fold flat against the side of the boat 
where they will be out of harm's way when we are run- 
ning on the surface or lying alongside the mother-ship. 
Better come below now, for w^e 're going to dive." 

We descended into the turret and the hatch was closed. 
The Diesel engines had already been stopped and the 
electric motors were now turning the propellers. 

' Why are those big electric pumps working down 
there? " I asked. 

" Pumping water into the ballast-tanks." 

" But does n't the water run into the tanks anyhow, as 
soon as you open the valves ? " I asked the lieutenant. 

' Turn a tumbler upside down and force it dow r n into 
a basin of water," he replied, " and you trap some air 
in the top of the tumbler, which prevents the water from 
rising beyond a certain point. The same thing takes 
place in our tanks, and to fill them we have to force in 



112 The Story of the Submarine 

the water with powerful pumps that compress the air in 
the tanks to a very small part of its original bulk. This 
compressed air acts as a powerful spring to drive the 
water out of the tanks again when we wish to rise. By 
blowing out the tanks, a submarine can come to the sur- 
face in twenty seconds or one sixth the time it takes to 
submerge." 

" When are we going under? " I asked him. The lieu- 
tenant looked at his watch and answered, 

" We have been submerged for the last four minutes." 

I experienced a feeling of the most profound disap- 
pointment. Ever since I had been a very small boy I had 
been looking forward to the time when I should go down 
in a submarine boat, and now that time had passed with- 
out my realizing it. 

" But why did n't I feel the boat tilt when she dived ? " 
I demanded. 

" Because she went down a very gentle slope, between 
two and three degrees at the steepest. The only way you 
could have noticed it would have been to watch these 
gages." 

Large dials on the wall of the turret indicated that the 
X-4 was running on what was practically an even keel at 
a depth of sixteen feet and under a consequent water- 
pressure of 1024 pounds on every square foot of her hull. 

" How deep could she go? " 

"One hundred and fifty feet — if she had to. The 
strong inner hull of a modern submarine is built up of 
three quarter inch plates of the best mild steel and well 
braced and strengthened from within. But as a rule 
there is no need of our diving below sixty feet at the 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 113 

deepest, or far enough to clear the keel of the largest 
ship. You will notice how the depth-control man is 
holding her steady by manipulating the forward hori- 
zontal rudders, just as an aviator steadies his aeroplane." 




Courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. 

Depth-control Station, U. S. Submarine. 
Wheel governing horizontal rudders, gages showing depth, trim, etc. 

" He must be a strong man to handle those two big 
horizontal rudders." 

" He has an electric motor to do the hard work for him, 
as has the quartermaster steering the course here with 
the vertical rudder." 

The same red-headed petty officer that I had noticed 
on the bridge now grasped the spokes of a smaller steer- 
ing-wheel inside the conning-tower. 

' What is that queer-looking thing whirling round and 
round in front of him? " I asked. 

" A Sperry gyroscopic compass," replied the lieutenant. 



114 The Story of the Submarine 

" An ordinary magnetic compass could not be relied on 
to point in any particular direction if it was shut up in 
a steel box full of charged electric wires, like the turret 
of a submarine. We tried to remedy this by building con- 
ning-towers of copper, till Mr. Sperry perfected a compass 

that has no magnetic 
needle, but operates on 
the principle of the 
gyroscope. You know 
that a heavy, rapidly 
rotating w T heel resists 
any tendency to being 
shifted relative to 
space? " 
" Yes." 

" The earth, revolv- 
ing on its axis, is noth- 
ing but a big gyroscope 
— that is why it stays 
put. The little gyro- 
scope on this compass 
spins at right angles to 
the revolution of the 

earth and so keeps in a 
Cross-section of a Periscope. due north and south 

line. But the frame \t is mounted on turns with the 
ship, so the relative positions of the frame and the gyro- 
axis show in what direction the submarine is heading/ ' 

" And you can see what 's ahead of you through the 
periscope. Who invented that? " 

" The idea is a very old one. Certain French and 




A Trip in a Modern Submarine 115 

Dutch inventors designed submarines with periscopes as 
long ago as the eighteen-fifties. In the Civil War, the 
light-draft river-monitor Osage had attached to her turret 
a crude periscope made by her chief engineer, Thomas 
Doughty, out of a piece of three-inch steam-pipe with 
holes cut at each of its ends at opposite sides, and pieces 
of looking-glass inserted as reflectors. By means of 
this instrument her captain, now Rear-Admiral, Thomas 
O. Sel fridge, was able to look over the high banks of the 
Red River when the Osage had run aground in a bend 
and was being attacked by three thousand dismounted 
Confederate cavalry, who were repulsed with the loss of 
four hundred killed or wounded by the fire of the moni- 
tor's 1 1 -inch guns, directed through the periscope. 2 

" But as late as 1900 the periscope was so crude and un- 
satisfactory an instrument that John P. Holland would 
have nothing to do with it. The credit for bringing it 
to its present efficiency belongs chiefly to the Germans, 
who kept many of their scientists working together on 
the solution of the difficult problems of optics that were 
involved. 

" By turning this little crank," the lieutenant continued, 
" I can revolve the reflector at the top of the tube. This 
reflector contains a prism which reflects the image of the 
object in view down through a system of lenses in the 
tube to another prism here at the bottom, where the ob- 
server sees it through an eyepiece and telescope lenses." 

I looked into the eyepiece, which was so much like that 
of an old-fashioned stereoscope that I felt that it, too, 
ought to work back and forth after the manner of a 

2 From an article by Admiral Self ridge in the " Outlook/' 



n6 The Story of the Submarine 

slide trombone. I found myself looking out over the 
broad blue waters of a sunlit bay. I noticed a squall 
blackening the surface of the water, a catboat running 
before it, and the gleam of the brass instruments of the 
band playing on the after deck of a big white excursion 
steamer half a mile away. 

" I can almost imagine I can hear the music of that 
band," I exclaimed. " The optical illusion is perfect." 

" It has to be," rejoined the lieutenant. " If the image 
were in the least distorted or out of perspective, we 
could n't aim straight." 

" What do you do when the periscope is wet with 
spray? " I asked him. 

" Wash the glass with a jet of alcohol and dry it from 
the inside with a current of warm air passing up and 
down the tube. A periscope-tube is double : the outer 
one passing through a stuffing-box in the hull, and the in- 
ner tube revolving inside it. The old-fashioned single 
tubes were too hard to revolve and the resistance of the 
water used to bend them aft and cause leakage. We can 
raise and lower the periscopes at will, and all our larger 
boats have two of them, so that they can keep a look- 
out in two directions at once, besides having a spare eye 
in case the first is put out." 

" What are those two little things that big naval tug 
is towing over there? " I inquired. 

" The target for our torpedo practice," replied Lieu- 
tenant Scope. " We shall try to put four Whiteheads 
between those two buoys as the tug tows them past at an 
unknown range and speed. If you step forward to the 
torpedo room you can see them loading the tubes." 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 117 

As I walked forward it occurred to me that the twenty- 
odd men on board the X-4 seemed to be moving about 
inside her with perfect freedom, without disturbing her 
trim. I mentioned this to one of the crew. 

" It 's the trimming-tanks that keep her level/' he ex- 
plained. " As we 're walking forward, our weight in 
water is being automatically pumped from the trimming- 




courtesy of the Electric Boat Company. 

Forward torpedo-compartment, U. S. Submarine, showing breech- 
mechanism of four tubes. Round opening above is the escape- 
hatch. 

tank in the bow to the one astern. A submarine is just 
one blamed tank after another. Stand clear of that 
chain-fall, sir; they 're loading No. 1 tube." 

Stripped to the waist like an old-time gun-crew, four 
beautifully muscled young gunner's mates were hoisting, 
with an ingenious arrangement of chains and pulleys, a 
torpedo from the magazine. The breach of the tube was 
opened and the long Whitehead thrust in, two flanges on 



n8 The Story of the Submarine 

its sides being fitted into deep grooves in the sides of the 
tube, so that the torpedo would not spin like a rifle-bullet 
but be launched on an even keel. The breach was closed, 
and the men stood by expectantly. 

" Skipper 's up in the conning-tower, taking aim 
through the periscope," explained the man who had told 
me about trimming-tanks. " The tubes being fixed in the 
bow, he has to train the whole boat like a gun. Likewise 
he 's got to figure out how far it is to the target and how 
fast the tug is towing it, how many seconds it 's going to 
take the torpedo to get, there, and how much he 's got to 
allow for its being carried off its course by tide and cur- 
rents. When he gets good and ready, the lieutenant '11 
press a little electric button and you '11 hear — " 

" Thud ! " went the compressed air in the tube, and the 
submarine shuddered slightly with the shock of the re- 
coil. But that was all. 

" There she goes ! " said my friend the tank-expert. 
" As soon as the Whitehead was expelled, a compensation- 
tank just above the tube was flooded with enough water 
to make good the loss in weight." 

" What keeps the sea-water from rushing into the tube 
after the torpedo leaves it? " I asked. 

" A conical-shaped cap on the bow of the boat keeps 
both tubes closed except when you want to fire one of 
them. Then the cap, which is pivoted on its upper edge, 
swings to port or starboard just long enough for the tor- 
pedo to get clear and swings back before the water can 
get in/' 

Four of the ten torpedoes carried in the magazine were 
sped on their way to the unseen target. I returned to 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 119 

the turret as the wireless operator entered and handed a 
typewritten slip to Lieutenant Scope, who smiled happily 
and said to me, 

" The captain of the tug reports that all four shots 
were hits and all four torpedoes have been safely re- 
covered." 

I was too astonished to congratulate him on his marks- 
manship, as I should have done. 

"How in the name of miracles !" I gasped. " Can 
you receive a wireless telegram under the sea? " 

" By the Fessenden oscillator," he replied, and added 
to the wireless man, 

" Take this gentleman below and show him how it 
works." 

" Did you ever have another chap knock two stone to- 
gether under water when you were taking a dive? " asked 
the operator. I nodded in vivid recollection. 

" Then you have some idea how sounds are magnified 
under water. It is an old idea to put submarine bells 
down under lighthouses and fit ships with some kind of 
receiver so that the bells can be heard and warning given 
when it is too foggy to see the light. The advantage over 
the old-style bell-buoy lies in the fact that sound travels 
about four times as fast through water as through air, 3 
and goes further and straighter because it is n't deflected 
by winds or what the aviators call ' air-pockets/ The 
man who knows most about these things is Professor 
Fessenden, of the Submarine Signal Company of Boston, 

3 The velocity of sound in dry air at a temperature of 32 degrees 
Fahrenheit is about 1087 feet a second, in water at 44 degrees, about 
4708 feet a second. 



120 The Story of the Submarine 




Courtesy of the American Magazine. 

Fessenden oscillator outside the hull of a ship. 
a modern vessel. 



The 



of 



who first realized the possibility of telegraphing through 
water. 4 

" Fastened outside the hull of this boat is one of the 
Fessenden oscillators: a steel disk eighteen inches in 
diameter, that can be vibrated very rapidly by electricity. 

4 The sound of the first gun of the salute fired by the Russian fleet 
in Cronstadt harbor to celebrate the coronation of Alexander II in 
1855 was the signal for the crew of the submerged submarine Le 
Diable Marin to begin singing the. National Anthem. Their voices, 
accompanied by a band of four pieces, were distinctly heard above 
the surface. This novel concert had been planned by Wilhelm Bauer, 
the designer of the submarine and one of the earliest students of 
under-water acoustics. He succeeded in signaling from one side 
of the harbor to another by striking a submerged piece of sheet- 
iron with a hammer. 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 121 

These vibrations travel through the water, like wireless 
waves through the ether, till they strike the oscillator on 
another vessel and set it to vibrating in sympathy. To 
send a message, I start and stop the oscillator with this 
key so as to form the dots and dashes of the Morse code. 
To receive, I sit here with these receivers over my ears 
and ' listen in/ just like a wireless operator, till I pick up 
our call ' X-4,' ' X-4.' " 

" How far can you send a message under water ? " 
" Ten miles is the furthest I 've ever sent one. Profes- 
sor Fessenden has sent messages more than thirty miles. 
The invention only dates back to 191 3 and what it will 
do in the future, there is no telling." 

" Even now, could n't a surface vessel act as eyes for 




Courtesy of the American Magazine. 



Professor Fessenden receiving a message sent through several 
miles of sea-water by his " Oscillator." 



122 The Story of the Submarine 

a whole flotilla of submarines and tell them where to 
go and when to strike by coaching them through the 
Fessenden oscillator? " 

The operator nodded. 

" We 're doing it to-day, in practice. But don't forget 
that an enemy's ship carrying a pair of oscillators can 
hear a submarine coming two miles away. You can 
make out the beat of a propeller at that distance every 
time." 

" But how can you tell how far away and in what 
direction it is? " 

" I can't, with a single oscillator like ours. But a ship 
carries two of them, one on each side of the hull, like the 
ears on a man's head. And just as a man knows whether 
a shout he hears comes from the right or left, because 
he hears it more with one ear than the other, so the 
skipper of a surface craft can look at the indicator that 
registers the relative intensity of the vibrations received 
by the port and starboard oscillators and say, 

" ' There 's somebody three points off the starboard 
bow, mile and three quarters away, and heading for us. 
Nothing in sight, so it must be one of those blamed sub- 
marines.' 

" And away he steams, full speed ahead and cutting 
zigzags. Or maybe he gets his rapid-fire guns ready and 
w T atches for Mr. Submarine to rise — like the X-4 's do- 
ing now." 

Freed of the dead weight of many tons of sea water 
blown from her ballast-tanks by compressed air, the sub- 
marine rose to the surface like a balloon. Ventilators 
and hatch-covers were thrown open and we swarmed up 



A Trip in a Modern Submarine 123 

on deck to fill our grateful lungs with the good sea air. 
Three motor-boats from the tug throbbed up alongside 
with the four torpedoes we had discharged. 

" Those boats wait, one this side of the target, one near 
it and the third over on the far side, to mark the shots 
and catch the torpedoes after they rise to the surface at 
the end of their run/' said Lieutenant Scope. " We very 
seldom lose a torpedo nowadays. They tell a story about 
one that dived to the bottom and was driven by the force 
of its own engines into forty feet of soft mud, where 
it stayed till it happened to be dug up by a dredger/' 

The four torpedoes were hoisted aboard, drained of 
the sea water that had flooded their air-chambers, cleaned 
and lowered through the torpedo hatch forward down 
into the magazine. By this time the bridge and railing 
were again in place and the flags fluttering over the 
tafifrail as the X-4, her day's work done, sped swiftly up 
the coast to home and mother-ship. 



CHAPTER X 

ACCIDENTS AND SAFETY DEVICES 

THE following submarines, with all or part of their 
crews, have been accidentally lost in time of peace : 



Date 


Name 


Nationality 


Men Lost 


March 18, 1904 


A- 1 


British 


11 


June 20, 1904 


Delfin 


Russian 


26 


June 8, 1905 


A-8 


British 


14 


July 6, 1905 


Farfadet 


French 


14 


October 16, 1906 


Lutin 


French 


13 


April 26, 1909 


Foca 


Italian 


13 


June 12, 1909 


Kambala 


Russian 


20 


July 14, 1909 


C-11 


British 


13 


April 15, 1910 


No. 6. 


Japanese 


14 


May 26, 1910 


Pluviose 


French 


26 


January 17, 191 1 


U-3 


German 


3 


February 2, 1912 


A-3 


British 


14 


June 8, 1912 


Vendemiaire 


French 


24 


October 4, 1912 


B-2 


British 


15 


June 8, 1913 


E-5 


British 


3 


December 10, 1913 


C-14 


British 


none 


January 16, 1914 


A-7 


British 


11 


March 25, 1915 


F-4 


American 


21 



The A-i was engaged in manoeuvers off Spithead, Eng- 
land, when she rose to the surface right under the bows 
of the fast-steaming Union Castle Liner Berwick Castle. 
Before anything could be done, the sharp prow of the 
steamer had cut a great gash in the thin hull of the sub- 
marine and sent her to the bottom with all her crew. 
This was in broad daylight; her sister-ship C-11 was 

124 



Accidents and Safety Devices 125 

rammed and sunk by another liner three years later, at 
night. The Pluviose of the French navy escaped the bow 
of an on-coming cross-channel steamer when the subma- 
rine came up at the entrance to Calais Harbor, only to 
have her topsides crushed in by a blow from one of the 
paddle-wheels. Collisions like these are less likely to hap- 
pen nowadays, for the navigating officer of a modern sub- 
marine can take a look round the horizon through the 
periscope from a depth sufficient to let most steamers 
pass harmlessly over him, and in case of darkness or fog, 
he can detect the vibrations of approaching propellers by 
means of the Fessenden oscillator or some similar device. 
Yet the frequency with which submarines have been in- 
tentionally rammed and sunk in the present war shows 
that they would still be liable to rise blindly to their de- 
struction in time of peace. 

The vapor from a leaking fuel-tank, making an ex- 
plosive mixture with the air inside the submarine and set 
off by a spark from the electrical machinery, has caused 
many accidents of another kind. Such an explosion took 
place on the original Holland, shortly after she was taken 
into the government service, but fortunately without kill- 
ing any one. As the crew of the British A-$ were filling 
the fuel tanks of their vessel with gasoline, some of 
them were blown up through the open hatchway and into 
the sea by a burst of flaming vapor that killed six men 
and terribly injured twelve more. A rescue party that 
entered the boat to save the men still left aboard had 
several of its own members disabled by a second explosion. 
The vessel itself, however, was almost unharmed. But 
not long afterwards, another submarine of the same ill- 



126 The Story of the Submarine 

fated class, the A-8, was lying off Plymouth breakwater 
with her hatches open, when the people on shore heard 
three distinct explosions on board her and saw her sud- 
denly submerge. Her crew evidently got the hatches 
closed before she went down, as they sent up signals that 
they were alive but unable to rise. Two hours later a 
fourth explosion took place and all hope was abandoned. 

This danger has been guarded against by better con- 
struction of tanks and valves, and very greatly lessened 
by the substitution of the heavy oil used in the Diesel 
engines for the more costly and volatile gasoline. 

Besides igniting explosive oil vapors with their sparks, 
the old-fashioned sulphuric acid and lead storage bat- 
teries still used in many submarines are a great source of 
danger in themselves. The jars are too easily broken, 
and the leaking acid eats into the steel plating of the boat, 
weakening it if not actually letting in the sea water. And 
if salt water comes in contact with a battery of this 
type, then chlorin gas — the same poisonous gas that the 
Germans use against the Allies , trenches — is generated 
and the crew are in very great danger of suffocation. 
The new Edison alkali storage battery, besides being 
lighter and more durable, uses no acid and cannot give 
off chlorin when saturated with sea water. 

The remaining great danger is that a submarine may 
get out of control and submerge too quickly, so that it 
either strikes the bottom, at the risk of being crushed in 
or entangled, or descends to so great a depth that its 
sides are forced in by the pressure of the water outside, 
which also prevents the submarine from discharging the 
water in its ballast tanks and escaping to the surface. 



*3 



O 3 



O 



3 a w 

o -t 




128 The Story of the Submarine 

Detachable safety weights and keels to lighten the boat 
in such an emergency date back to the time of Bushnell 
and J. Day. A more modern device is to have a hydro- 
static valve ( see page 51) set to correspond with the 
pressure of a certain depth of water, so that if the sub- 
marine goes below this the valve will be forced in and 
automatically " blow the tanks/' 

A submarine that sank too deep was the No. 6, of the 
Imperial Japanese navy, which disappeared while manoeu- 
vering in Hiroshima Bay, on April 15, 1910. When she 
was found, her entire crew lay dead at their stations, and 
in the conning-tower, beside the body of the commander, 
was the following letter written by that officer, Lieutenant 
Takuma Faotomu : 

" Although there is indeed no excuse to make for the 
sinking of his Imperial Majesty's boat, and for the do- 
ing away of subordinates through my heedlessness, all on 
board the boat have discharged their duties well and in 
everything acted calmly until death. Although we are 
dying in the pursuance of our duty to the State, the only 
regret we have is due to anxiety lest the men of the world 
misunderstand the matter, and that thereby a blow may 
be given to the future development of the submarine. 

" Gentlemen, we hope you will be increasingly diligent 
and not fail to appreciate the cause of the accident, and 
that you will devote your entire energy to investigate 
everything and so secure the future development of sub- 
marines. If this be done we have nothing to regret. 

" While going through gasoline submerged exercises 
we submerged too far, and when we attempted to shut 
the sluice-valve, the chain broke. 



Accidents and Safety Devices 129 

" Then we tried to close the sluice-valve by hand, but 
it was too late, for the afterpart was full of water, and 
the boat sank at an angle of about twenty-five degrees. 
The boat came to rest at an incline of about twelve de- 
grees, pointing towards the stern. The switchboard be- 
ing under water the electric lights went out. Offensive 
gas developed and breathing became difficult. The boat 
sank about 10 a.m. on the 15th, and though suffering at 
the time from this offensive gas, we endeavored to expel 
the water by hand pumps. As the vessel went down we 
expelled the water from the main tank. As the light has 
gone out the gage cannot be seen, but we know the water 
has been expelled from the main tank. 

" We cannot use the electric current at all. The bat- 
tery is leaking but no salt water has reached it and 
chlorin gas has not developed. We only rely on the 
hand pump now. 

" The above was written under the light of the con* 
ning-tower, at about 11.45 o'clock. We are now soaked 
by the water that has made its way in. Our clothes are 
wet and we feel cold. I had been accustomed to warn my 
shipmates that their behavior (in an emergency) should 
be calm and deliberate, as well as brave, yet not too 
deliberate, lest work be retarded. People may be tempted 
to ridicule this after this failure, but I am perfectly con- 
fident that my words have not been mistaken. 

" The depth gage of the conning-tower indicates 52 
feet, and despite our efforts to expel the water the pump 
stopped and would not work after 12 o'clock. The depth 
in this neighborhood being ten fathoms, the reading may 
be correct. 



130 The Story of the Submarine 

" The officers and men of submarines should be chosen 
from the bravest of the brave or there will be annoyances 
in cases like this. Happily all the members of this crew 
have discharged their duties well and I am satisfied. 
I have always expected death whenever I left my home, 
and therefore my will is already in the drawer at Kara- 
saki. (This remark applies only to my private affairs 
and is really superfluous. Messrs. Taguchi and Asami 
will please inform my father of this.) 

" I respectfully request that none of the families left 
by my subordinates suffer. The only thing I am anxious 
about is this. 

" Atmospheric pressure is increasing and I feel as if 
my tympanum were breaking. 

" 12.30 o'clock. Respiration is extraordinarily diffi- 
cult. I mean I am breathing gasoline. I am intoxi- 
cated with gasoline. 

" It is 12.40 o'clock." 

Those were the last words "written by Lieutenant 
Takuma Faotomu, bravest of the brave. 

Very many ingenious devices have been invented to 
enable the crew of a stranded submarine to escape. The 
best-known and most widely used is some form of the 
air-lock or diver's chamber, as described in the chapter on 
the Lake boats. Through this the crew can pass in suc- 
cession to the water outside and swim to the surface. If 
the depth is so great that an unprotected swimmer would 
be crushed by the weight of water above him, there is a 
great variety of safety-helmets, and of jackets with 
mouth-pieces leading to tanks containing enough air un- 
der moderate pressure to inflate the lungs and cheeks so 



Accidents and Safety Devices 131 

that the internal pressure of the body will counteract that 
of the water. An escaping seaman, burdened with such 
a device, cannot rise unaided to the surface but must 
climb or be hauled up by a rope let down from above. 
Moreover, he must not ascend too rapidly, or the pressure 
w T ithin his body will dangerously exceed that without, 
as if he had been suddenly 
picked up at the seashore and 
carried to the top of the 
Andes. The human body is 
too delicate and elaborate a 
structure to be carelessly 
turned into a compressed-air 
tank. The surplus oxygen 
forms bubbles which try to 
force their way out through 
the tissues of the body, caus- 
ing intense pain, and possibly 
paralysis or death. To avoid 
this, divers are brought up 
from any great depth by 
slow and careful stages, un- 
less they can be placed at 
once in specially-constructed 

tanks on shore, where the pressure they are under can be 
gradually reduced to normal. 

A covered lifeboat carried in a socket on the sub- 
marine's deck, so that in case of accidental stranding the 
crew could get into the small boat from below, close the 
hatch cover, release the lifeboat from within, and rise 
safely and comfortably to the surface, was an attractive 




Courtesy of the Scientific American. 

One Type of Safety-jacket. 



132 The Story of the Submarine 

feature of the Plongeur in 1863, and of many projected 
but unbuilt submarines since then. A detachable con- 
ning-tower, containing a small lifeboat that could be 
launched after the safety compartment had risen to the 
surface, has also been designed and patented more than 
once. Theoretically, these devices seem admirable but 
naval architects will have none of them. The reason for 
this is very simple. A submarine is primarily a warship, 
an instrument of destruction, and its carrying capacity 
is too limited to permit several hundredweight of tor- 
pedoes or supplies being crowded out by a lifeboat or a 
score of safety-helmets. A divers' compartment and one 
or two ordinary diving-suits — for these things are of 
military value — and a buoy that can be sent up to mark 
the spot where the boat has gone down are as much as 
you can expect to find in the average naval submarine. 

One of the most instructive accidents that ever hap- 
pened to an undersea boat was the loss and rescue of the 
German U-3. She sank to the bottom of Kiel Harbor 
on January 17, 191 1. A small spherical buoy was re- 
leased and rose to the surface, where it was picked up 
and a telephone attached to the end of the thin wire 
cable. 

" Hello !" 

" Hello ! This is the captain of the U-3 speaking. 
We cannot rise, but we are resting easy and have air 
enough to last forty-eight hours. " 

" Good. The steam salvage-dock Vulcan has been 
sent for and will be here before then, Herr Kapitan." 

But before the Vulcan arrived, it occurred to some one 
in authority to attempt to raise the U-3 with a large float- 



Accidents and Safety Devices 133 

ing crane then available. The strong steel chain ready 
coiled at the lower end of the buoy-line was drawn up 
and made fast to the crane, which could not lift the 300- 
ton submarine bodily, but succeeded in hauling up its bow 
sufficiently for the twenty-seven petty officers and sea- 
men on board the C/-J to be shot up through the torpedo 
tube to the surface. The captain and his two lieutenants 
chose to remain. Shortly afterwards the chain slipped 
and broke off one of the boat's ventilators, letting water 
into the hull and drowning all three officers. 

Then the sea-going, steam salvage-dock Vulcan 
reached the scene and brought the U-j to the surface in 
three hours. 

" The Vulcan is a double-hulled vessel, 230 feet in 
length with a lifting capacity of 500 tons. The width 
between the two hulls is sufficient to admit with good 
clearance the largest submarines. At a suitable height 
a shelf is formed along each wall of the interior opening, 
and upon this rests the removable floor of the dock. The 
two hulls of the ship are each built with water-tight com- 
partments of large capacity, similar to those which are 
found in the side walls of the ordinary floating dock. 
When a sunken submarine is to be raised, the Vulcan 
steams to the wreck and is moored securely in position 
above it. Spanning the w r ell between the two hulls are 
two massive gantry cranes, each provided with heavy 
lifting tackle driven by electric motors. The first opera- 
tion is to fill the compartments until the vessel has sunk 
to the required depth. The floor of the dock is then 
moved clear of the well. The lifting tackles are now 
lowered and made fast, either to chains which have been 



134 The Story of the Submarine 

slung around the body of the submarine, or to two 
massive eyebolts which are permanently riveted into the 
submarine's hull. At the order to hoist away, the sub- 
marine is lifted free from the mud and drawn up within 
the well, until its bottom is clear of the supporting shelves 
on the inner faces of the two hulls, above referred to. 

The dock floor is 



then placed in posi- 
tion on the shelves, 
the water is pumped 
out of the two hulls, 
and the Vulcan 
rises, lifting the 
submarine and the 
dock floor clear of 
the water/' 1 

A similar vessel 
was built by the 
French government 
as a result of public 
indignation over the 
delay in raising the 
sunken Pluviose. 




Courtesy of the Scientific American. 

The Vulcan salvaging the U-3. 



Great Britain has a salvage dock with a lifting capacity 
of 1000 tons. But the most remarkable craft of this 
kind belongs to Italy and was designed by the famous 
engineer Major Cesare Laurenti, technical director of the 
Fiat-San Giorgio works, builders of some of the world's 
best submarines. She is a twin-hulled vessel, fitted not 
only to pick a sunken submarine from the sea bottom, but 
*■" Scientific American," January 28, 191 1, page 87. 



Accidents and Safety Devices 135 

to care for it in every way, for she is also a floating dry- 
dock, capable of repairing two of the largest subma- 
rines, besides being a fully equipped mother-ship for a 
flotilla of six. With the ends of her central tunnel closed 
by a false stem and stern, and propelled by twin screws 
driven by powerful Diesel engines, she is a fast and sea- 
worthy vessel, capable of keeping company with her flotilla 
on a surface cruise. She carries a sufficient armament of 
quick-firing guns to beat off a hostile destroyer. But the 
most noteworthy feature of the Laurenti dock is a long 
steel cylinder, capable of enduring great pressure from 
within, that is used to test the resisting strength of new 
submarines. A new boat, or a section of a proposed new 
type, is placed in this tube, which is filled with water that 
is then compressed by pumps, reproducing the effect of 
submergence to any desired depth. 

The United States navy tests each new submarine built 
for it by actually lowering the boat, with no one in it, 
to a depth of 200 feet. We have no Laurenti dock, no 
Vulcan, no sea-going salvage dock of any kind. The 
tender Fulton has a powerful crane, but she cannot be 
on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Far East, 
simultaneously. 

"- The difficulties encountered in raising the sunken 
British submarine A-3" wrote Mr. R. G. Skerrett in the 
" Scientific American " some years ago, " have in them 
a note of warning for us. We are steadily adding to 
our flotilla of under-water boats, and yet we have no 
proper facilities in the government service for the 
prompt salvage of any of these boats should they be 
carried suddenly to the bottom. We have been fortu- 



136 The Story of the Submarine 

nate so far in escaping serious accidents, but that is 
no reason for assuming that we are any more likely 
to be immune from disaster than any other naval serv- 
ice. We should profit by the catastrophes which have 
befallen England, Russia, France, Germany, and Japan, 
and no longer continue unprepared for kindred mis- 
haps." 2 

We refused to profit and we continued unprepared. 
Then came a brief official cablegram from Hawaii, 
"Honolulu, March 25, 1915. U. S. submarine F-4 left 
tender at 9 a.m. for submerged run. Failed to re- 
turn to surface." 

The other two submarines on the station and motor- 
boats from the tender Alert cruised about till they found 
the spot where oil and air-bubbles were coming to the 
surface. Two tugs then swept the bottom with a two- 
thousand foot sweep of chains and wire cables, which 
caught early the next morning on what proved to be the 
lost submarine, in three hundred feet of water, about 
a mile and a half outside the entrance to Honolulu Har- 
bor. 

For twenty- four hours or so the navy department 
held out the hope that the men on board her were still 
alive and might be rescued. But there was nothing 
ready to rescue them with. Three weeks were spent in 
building the windlasses for an improvised salvage-dock 
made out of two mud scows. In the meanwhile, a de- 
tachment of the department's most skilled divers were 
sent out from the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With their 
aid, strong wire cables were passed under the submarine's 
2 " Scientific American," November 23, 1912. 



Accidents and Safety Devices 137 

hull. While engaged on this work, one of the divers, 
Chief Gunner's Mate Frank Crilley, broke all deep sub- 
mergence records by descending to a depth of 288 feet. 
As a result, his lungs were severely injured and he soon 
afterwards developed pneumonia. 

The wire ropes chafed through and were replaced by 
chains. Then the F-4 was lifted from the bottom and 
towed inshore to a depth of fifty feet. Here a heavy 
storm set in and the lines had to be cast off. Six big 
cylindrical-shaped pontoons were then built at San Fran- 
cisco and brought out to Honolulu on the cruiser Mary- 
land. Divers passed fresh chains under the F-4, the pon- 
toons were sunk on either side of her, and coupled to- 
gether. Then the water was blown out of the pontoons 
by compressed-air piped down from above, the F-4 was 
raised to the surface, and tow r ed into dry dock. 

No decipherable written record was discovered inside 
her hull, which was filled with sand washed in through 
a large hole made in the plating by the chafing of the 
chains. But the story of the disaster was written in the 
plates and rivets of the vessel herself, and skilfully de- 
duced and reconstructed by a board of inquiry, headed 
by Rear-Admiral Boush. Their report, which was not 
made public till October 2J, told dramatically how the 
corroded condition of the lead lining in the battery tanks 
had let the acid eat away the rivets in the port wall of 
the forward tank. Salt water thus entered part of the 
battery, producing chlorin gas, which exploded violently, 
admitting more water, till the submarine began to sink 
by the head, in spite of the raising of her diving-rudders. 

" Automatic blow was tripped, and blow valve on 



138 The Story of the Submarine 

auxiliary tank opened in the endeavor to check downward 
momentum. Maneuvering with propellers probably 
took place. The appreciable length of time requisite 
for air to build up in ballast tanks for the expulsion 
of sufficient quantities of water resulted in the vessel 
reaching crushing depth. 

" Seams of the vessel began to open, and probably 
through open torpedo tubes and seams water entered the 
vessel and a condition of positive buoyancy was never 
attained. 

" There followed actual disaster. The vessel began 
filling with water. The personnel abandoned stations 
and many sought refuge in the engine room, closing the 
door. Under great pressure the engine room bulkhead 
failed suddenly, leaving the vessel on the bottom, com- 
pletely flooded/' 

All the boats of the " F " class had already been with- 
drawn from the service, by order of Secretary Daniels. 
Their place at Honolulu was taken by four boats of the 
" K " class, which made the 2100 mile voyage out from 
San Francisco under their own power. 



CHAPTER XI 

MINES 

THE MINE SWEEPERS 

" Ware mine ! " 
" Starboard your helm." . . . " Full speed ahead ! " 
The squat craft duly swings — 
A hand's breadth off, a thing of dread 
The sullen breaker flings. 

Carefully, slowly, patiently, 

The men of Grimsby Town 

Grope their way on the rolling sea — 

The storm-swept, treacherous, gray North Sea — 

Keeping the death-rate down. 

— H. Ingamells, in the " London Spectator." 

AMINE is a torpedo that has no motive-power of 
its own but is either anchored or set adrift in the 
supposed path of an enemy's ship. We have already 
seen how Bushnell used drifting mines at Philadelphia 
in 1777. Anchored mines are among the many inven- 
tions of Robert Fulton. The following description of 
the original type, illustrated by an engraving made by 
himself, is taken from Fulton's " Torpedo War and Sub- 
marine Explosions." 

" Plate II represents the anchored torpedo, so ar- 
ranged as to blow up a vessel which should run against 

139 



140 The Story of the Submarine 

it; B is a copper case two feet long, twelve inches di- 
ameter, capable of containing one hundred pounds of 
powder. A is a brass box, in which there is a lock simi- 
lar to a common gun lock, with a barrel two inches 
long, to contain a musket charge of powder: the box, 




Fulton's Anchored Torpedoes. 

with the lock cocked and barrel charged, is screwed to 
the copper case B. H is a lever which has a communi- 
cation to the lock inside of the box, and in its present 
state holds the lock cocked and ready to fire. C is a 
deal box filled with cork, and tied to the case B. The 
object of the cork is to render the torpedo about fifteen 



Mines 141 

or twenty pounds specifically lighter than water, and 
give it a tendency to rise to the surface. It is held down 
to any given depth under water by a weight of fifty or 
sixty pounds as at F: there is also a small anchor G, to 
prevent a strong tide moving it from its position. With 
torpedoes prepared, and knowing the depth of water 
in all our bays and harbors, it is only necessary to fix 
the weight F at such a distance from the torpedo, as 
when thrown into the water, F will hold it ten, twelve, or 
fifteen feet below the surface at low water, it will then be 
more or less below the surface at high water, or at 
different times of the tide; but it should never be so 
deep as the usual draft of a frigate or ship-of-the-line. 
When anchored, it will, during the flood tide, stand in its 
present position ; at slack water it will stand perpendicular 
to the weight F, as at D; during the ebb it will be at £. 
At ten feet under water the waves, in boisterous 
weather, would have little or no tendency to disturb the 
torpedo; for that if the hollow of a wave should sink 
ten feet below what would be the calm surface, the wave 
would run twenty feet high, which I believe is never the 
case in any of our bays and harbors. All the experi- 
ence which I have on this kind of torpedo is, that in the 
month of October, 1805, I had one of them anchored 
nine feet under water, in the British Channel near Dover ; 
the weather was severe, the waves ran high, it kept its 
position for twenty-four hours, and, when taken up, the 
powder was dry and the lock in good order. The tor- 
pedo thus anchored, it is obvious, that if a ship in sail- 
ing should strike the lever H, the explosion would be in- 
stantaneous, and she be immediately destroyed; hence, 



142 The Story of the Submarine 

to defend our bays or harbors, let a hundred, or more if 
necessary, of these engines be anchored in the channel, 
as for example, the Narrows, to defend New York. 

" The figure to the right of the plate is an end view of 
the torpedo. H-H shews its lever forked, to give the 
better chance of being struck. 

" Having described this instrument in a way which 
I hope will be understood," continues Fulton, " I may be 
permitted to put the following question to my reader, 
which is: Knowing that the explosion of one hundred 
pounds of powder, or more if required, under the bot- 
tom of a ship-of-the-line, would destroy her, and seeing, 
that if a ship in sailing should strike the lever of an 
anchored torpedo, she would be blown up, would he have 
the courage, or shall I say the temerity, to sail into a 
channel where one or more hundred of such engines were 
anchored? I rely on each gentleman's sense of prudence 
and self-preservation, to answer this question to my satis- 
faction. Should the apprehension of danger become as 
strong on the minds of those who investigate this subject 
as it is on mine, we may reasonably conclude that the 
same regard to self-preservation will make an enemy cau- 
tious in approaching waters where such engines are 
placed; for however brave sailors may be, there is no 
danger so distressing to the mind of a seaman, or so 
calculated to destroy his confidence, as that which is in- 
visible and instantaneous destruction.'' 

But Admiral Farragut at Mobile Bay, half a century 
later, did have the " temerity to sail into a channel where 
one or more hundred of such engines were anchored." 
The monitor Tecumseh struck and exploded a mine that 



M 



ines 



H3 



sent her to the bottom with almost her entire crew. 
The rest of the fleet began to waver when, from the 
main-rigging of the Hartford Farragut shouted his im- 
mortal command: 

"Full steam ahead! Damn the torpedoes ! " 
As the flagship led the way through the mine field, 
those on board heard mine after mine bump against her 
bottom, but though" the levers were struck and the primers 




Sinking of the U. S. S. Tecumseh, by a Confederate 
mine, in Mobile Bay. 



snapped, the powder-charges failed to explode. Hastily 
improvised out of beer-kegs and other receptacles, with 
tin or iron covers that became rusty and useless soon 
after they were placed under water, many of the Con- 
federate mines were in this respect inferior to the well- 
built copper torpedoes of Fulton. Yet crude as they 
were, they destroyed more than forty Northern warships, 
transports, and supply vessels. 



144 The Story of the Submarine 

Percussion-caps instead of flintlocks were now used 
to explode contact mines. A new type of anchored 
torpedo, set off by an electric spark through a wire run- 
ning to an operator on shore, was also a favorite with the 
Confederates. Because they are exploded not by contact 
with the ship's hull but by the closing of the circuit by 
the operator when he observes an enemy's vessel to be 
above one of them, these are called " observation mines." 
In the Civil War, many effective mines of this sort were 




From Scharf 's History of the Confederate States Navy. 

A Confederate " Keg-Torpedo." 

made out of whisky demijohns. One of these blew up 
the gunboat Cairo, in the Yazoo River, in the autumn 
of 1862. The double-ended, river gunboat Commodore 
Jones was blown to pieces by an observation mine, whose 
operator was subsequently captured and tied to the cut- 
water of another Federal gunboat as a warning and a 
hostage. During the bombardment of Fort Sumter by 
the United States fleet in 1863, the New Ironsides lay 
for an hour directly above an observation mine made of 
boiler iron and containing a ton of gunpowder but which 



Mines 



H5 



failed to explode despite all the efforts of the operator. 
He was naturally accused of treachery and it would have 
gone hard with him had it not been discovered, soon 
after the New Ironsides ceased firing and stood out to 
sea, that the shore end of the wire had been severed by 
the wheel of an ammunition wagon. 

During the Franco-Prussian War, the powerful French 
fleet blockaded the German coast but did not attack the 
shore batteries, which were well protected by mines. 




X7. 8. IEON-OLAD "CAIBO " (BLOWN UP BY CONFEDEBATE TOBPEDO), 

From Scharf 's History of the Confederate States Navy. 

First Warship Destroyed by a Mine. 

After peace was declared the foreign consuls at one of 
the North German seaports congratulated the burgomas- 
ter on having planted and taken up so many mines with- 
out a single accident. Unknown to any one, the pru- 
dent burgomaster had unloaded them first, and they kept 
the French away just as well. 

In the Spanish-American War, Admiral Dewey was 
able to enter Manila Bay and destroy the Spanish squad- 
ron there because its commander " had repeatedly asked 



146 The Story of the Submarine 

for torpedoes (mines) from Madrid, but had received 
none and his attempts to make them had been failures." * 
It was the mine fields and not the 
feeble shore batteries that kept 
Sampson's fleet out of Havana and 
Santiago. At Guantanamo, now a 
United States naval station, the 
Texas and the Marblehead each 
" struck her propeller against a con- 
tact mine, which failed to explode 
only because it was incrusted with 
a thick growth of barnacles. Grati- 
tude for the vessels' escape may 
fairly be divided between divine 
care to which the gallant and devout 
Captain Philip attributed it in his 
report, and the Spaniards' neglect 
to maintain a proper inspection of 
these defenses. A number of these 
torpedoes, which were of French 
manufacture, and contained forty- 
six and a half kilograms (one hun- 
dred and two pounds) of guncotton, 
were afterward dragged up in the channel." 2 

At the siege of Port Arthur in 1904, the Japanese fleet 
planted mines outside the harbor to keep the Russians in, 
and the Russians came out and planted mines of their 
own to entrap the blockaders. While engaged in this 
work, the Russian mine-layer Yenisei had a mine which 

1 Titherington's History of the Spanish-American War, p. 139. 

2 Ibid., page 202. 




From Seharf's History of the Con- 
federate States Navy. 

A Confederate " Buoy- 
ant Torpedo " or 
Contact-mine. 



Mines 147 

had just been lowered through her specially constructed 
sternports thrown by a wave against her rudder, and 
was blown to atoms by the consequent explosion of three 
hundred more in her hold. The flagship Petropavlosk, 
returning from a sortie on April 13, struck a Japanese con- 
tact-mine and went down with the loss of six hundred 
men, including Vereshchagin, the famous painter of war- 
scenes, and Admiral Makaroff, who was not only the 
commander but the heart and soul of the Russian fleet. 3 
A month later, another mine cost the Japanese their finest 
battleship, the Hatsuse. Nor was the loss confined either 
to the belligerents or to the duration of the war. Nearly 
one hundred Chinese and other neutral merchant vessels 
were sunk by some of the many mines torn loose from 
their anchors by storms to drift, the least noticeable and 
most terrible of derelicts, over all the seas of the Far 
East, long after peace was declared. 

The same thing on a larger scale will doubtless take 
place as a result of the present European War. From 
the Baltic to the Dardanelles, both sides have sown the 
waters thick with contact mines, hundreds of which have 
already broken loose and been cast up on the shores of 
Denmark, Holland, and other neutral lands. How many 
more have been picked up on the coasts of the different 
belligerent countries, the military censors have naturally 
kept a close secret; how many of these infernal machines 
are now drifting about the North Sea, the North At- 
lantic, and the Mediterranean it is impossible to compute. 
Scarcely a week passes without the publication of such 

3 He had done notable work with mines himself, during the Russo- 
Turkish War of 1878. 



148 The Story of the Submarine 

news items as the following extracts from " Current 
events in Norway/' in the " American-Scandinavian Re- 
view " for July- August, 191 5: 

" One hundred and fifty mines had been brought into 
Bergen up to April 12. The steamer Caprivi of Ber- 
gen, which sank after being struck by a mine off the 
coast of Ireland, was on its way from Baltimore with a 
cargo of 4150 tons of grain, the property of the Nor- 
wegian government. . . . The German government has 
declared its willingness to comply with the demand of the 
Norwegian government for compensation for the Bel- 
ridge, provided it be proved that the sinking of the 
steamer was the result of a German torpedo. The pieces 
of the shell found in the side of the vessel are to be sent 
to the German government, and in case there should be 
any disagreement about the facts they will be submitted 
to arbitration/' 

Unfortunately in most cases where a neutral ship is 
so sunk, the exploding mine automatically destroys all 
evidence of its own origin, and each belligerent promptly 
and positively declares that it must have been planted, 
if not deliberately set adrift, by the other side. The neu- 
tral is left to get what satisfaction he can out of the rul- 
ing of the last Hague Conference that all contact mines 
must be so constructed as to become harmless after break- 
ing loose from their moorings. There is nothing me- 
chanically difficult about installing such a safety device, 
and all the great powers now at war with each other 
solemnly pledged themselves to do so. But the tempta- 
tion of perhaps destroying a hostile battleship as the 



Mines 149 

Hatsusc was destroyed, by a drifting mine, has appar- 
ently been too great. 

Premature explosion of the mine during handling and 
planting, such as caused the destruction of the Yenisei 
is, of course, carefully guarded against. One of the 
simplest and most effective safety devices is that used in 
the British navy, where the external parts of the explod- 
ing apparatus are sealed with a thick layer of sugar, 
which is dissolved by the sea-water after being sub- 
merged for a few minutes. By then the mine-laying 
vessel has had time to get safely out of the neighbor- 
hood. 

Modern mines are of various shapes and sizes but are 
as a rule either spherical or shaped like a pear with the 
stem down. The anchor is a hollow, flat-bottomed cylin- 
der, containing its own anchor cable wound on a wind- 
lass, and making a convenient base or stand for the ex- 
plosive chamber or mine proper, so that the whole ap- 
paratus can be stood or trundled about the deck of a 
mine-layer like a barrel. Once placed in the water either 
by being dropped through the overhanging stern-ports 
of a large sea-going mine-planter like the U.S.S. San 
Francisco, or lowered over the side of a smaller craft 
by a derrick boom, the weight of its anchor causes the 
mine to assume an upright position. This releases a 
small w r eight or plummet at the end of a short line at- 
tached to a spring that keeps the windlass inside the 
anchor from revolving. When the plummet has sunk to 
the end of its cord, its weight pulls down the spring, 
and the windlass begins to revolve and unreel the cable, 



150 The Story of the Submarine 

the end of which is, of course, made fast to the bottom 
of the mine. This causes the anchor, which has been 
held up by the buoyancy of the mine, to sink, and fol- 
lows the plummet till the latter touches the bottom. 
Freed of the plummet's weight, the spring now flies up 
and stops the windlass. But the hollow anchor is now 




(Redrawn from the London Sphere. ) 

Modern Contact-Mine. 

A, Mine-Planter; B, Mine being dropped overboard; C, Plummet-line ex- 
tended; D, Anchor sinking; E, Plummet touching bottom; F, Mine sub- 
merged and anchored; G, Battleship striking mine; 1, The "Striker"; 
2, Charge of Explosives; 3, Air-space, for Buoyancy; 4, Mine-case; 5, 
Anchor; 6, Plummet, 

filled with water, whose additional weight drags the mine 
under. When the anchor rests on the bottom, the mine 
will be at the same distance beneath the surface of the 
water as the anchor had to sink after the windlass 
stopped, or the length of the plummet's line. By regu- 
lating that, a mine can be made automatically to set itself 
at any desired depth. 



Mines 151 

Mines are almost never laid singly but in groups, the 
area of water so planted being called a " mine field/' 
A secret, zigzag channel is often left clear for the benefit 
of friendly craft. The rows of mines are usually " stag- 
gered " or placed like the men on a checker-board, so 
that if a hostile vessel passes through an opening in the 
first row she will strike a mine in the second. Another 
device is to couple together the mooring cables of two 
or more mines so that a ship passing between them will 
draw them in against her sides. 

. Contact may cause explosion in any one of several 
different ways. The head or sides of the mine may be 
studded with projecting rods like the striker on the nose 
of a Whitehead, to be either driven directly in against 
a detonating charge of fulminate or else open the jaws 
of a clutch and release the spring of a firing-pin. Such 
external movable parts, however, are too prone to become 
overgrown and clogged with barnacles and the like. A 
more modern way is to have the shock of the collision 
with the ship's hull dislodge a heavy ball held in a cup 
inside the mine. The fall of this weight sets in motion 
machinery which fires the detonating charge. Or the 
device may not be mechanical but electrical, as in the 
type of mine that, when drawn far enough over to one 
side by a vessel passing over it, spills a cupful of mer- 
cury. This stream of liquid metal closes an electric cir- 
cuit, so that an electric current passes through a piece 
of platinum wire embedded in fulminate and heats it red-^ 
hot, with obvious results. This current may be obtained 
either from a storage-battery carried in the mine itself, 
or through a wire running down the mooring cable and 



152 The Story of the Submarine 

over the bottom to the shore. Most shore-control mines 
are so designed that they can either be fired by observa- 
tion, or else turned into electro-contact mines of the 
above-mentioned type by arranging the switches in the 
controlling station. It is also possible to have the contact 
serve to warn the operator on shore by ringing a bell 
and indicating the position of the intruding ship in the 
mine-field. 

Just as barbed-wire entanglements on land are blown 
out of the way by small charges of high explosives, so 
mined areas of the sea can be cleared by " counter-min- 
ing/' One or more strings of linked-together mines, of 
a small, easily-handled type, are carefully placed by light- 
draft vessels in the waters already planted by the enemy. 
When these are exploded together, the concussion is 
enough to destroy any anchored mines near at hand, 
either by setting off their exploding-devices or causing 
their cases to leak, so that they will be filled with water 
and sink harmlessly to the bottom. Or a channel may 
be cleared by " sweeping " it with a drag-rope towed 
along the bottom by two small steamers, exploding the 
mines or tearing them up by the roots. Very effective 
work of this kind has been done by the small steam- 
trawlers used by the North Sea fishermen, and if any- 
thing of the sort is ever necessary in American waters 
we may be thankful for the powerful sea-going tugs now 
towing strings of barges up and down our coasts. 

But even a light field-piece on shore can shell and 
sink the sort of small, unarmored craft that must be used 
for mine-sweeping. When a fleet attacks a channel or 
harbor entrance properly defended by both mine-fields 



154 The Story of the Submarine 

and batteries, each supporting the other, there comes a 
time when the naval forces must wait till troops can be 
landed to drive away the forces protecting the rear of the 
batteries, so that the mine-sweepers can advance and clear 
a channel for the superdreadnoughts. The most striking 
example of this is the holding of the Allied fleet by the 
Turks at the Dardanelles. 

There, too, effective use is being made of the latest, 
which is an adaptation of the oldest type of torpedo: the 
drifting mine. 4 This twentieth-century improvement on 
BushnelFs " kegs charged with powder " floats upright, 
with a vertical-acting propeller on top and another on its 
bottom, and a hydrostatic valve set to maintain it at any 
desired depth. Should it rise or sink, the change in pres- 
sure will cause the valve to act on the principle already 
explained in connection with the Whitehead torpedo (see 
page 44). Controlled by the valve, the little compressed- 
air motor attached to the vertical propellers will cause 
them to make a few revolutions, just enough to keep the 
mine at a constant depth beneath the surface of the 
Dardanelles, as the four-mile-an-hour current carries it 
down against the Anglo-French fleet. Within a few 
hours of each other, during the furious bombardment 
of the forts on March 18, 19 15, the French battleship 
Bonvet was struck by one of these drifting mines and 
went down stern- foremost, then H.M.S. Ocean w T as sunk 
by another, and the Irresistible forced to run ashore to 
escape sinking, only to be pounded to pieces by the guns 
of the forts. A feature of this type of mine is that its 

4 This was a very popular type with the Confederate Torpedo 
Service in the Civil War. 



Mines 155 

size and shape enable it to be launched through a torpedo 
tube, either from a surface craft or from a submarine. 

Ordinary contact-mines, without anchors and attached 
to floats that held them a few feet below the surface of 
the water, are sometimes dropped overboard from a 
vessel closely pursued by an enemy. A small mine so 
dropped by a German light cruiser returning from an 
attempted raid on the English coast, early in the war, 
was struck by the pursuing British submarine D-5 and 
sent her to the bottom. The D-$ was running awash 
at the time and only two officers and two seamen were 
saved. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE SUBMARINE IN ACTION 

" Hit and hard hit ! The blow went home 

The muffled knocking stroke, 

The steam that overrides the foam, 

The foam that thins to smoke, 

The smoke that cloaks the deep aboil, 

The deep that chokes her throes, 

Till, streaked with ash and sleeked with oil, 

The lukewarm whirlpools close ! " 

— Kipling. 

THE first submarine in history to sink a hostile 
warship without also sinking herself is the E-p of 
the British navy. Together with most of her consorts, 
she was sent, at the outbreak of the present war, to explore 
and reconnoiter off the German coast and the island 
fortress of Heligoland to find where the enemy's ships 
were lying, how they were protected and how they might 
be attacked. After six weeks of such work, the E-p 
entered Heligoland Bight on September 13, 1914, and dis- 
charged two torpedoes at the German light cruiser Hela. 
One exploded against her bow and the other amidships, 
and the cruiser went down almost immediately, drown- 
ing many of her crew. 

Another British submarine had already appeared in 
action off Heligoland but as a saver instead of a de- 
stroyer of human life. On the 28th of August a number 

156 




Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. 

English Submarine Rescuing English Sailors. 



157 



158 The Story of the Submarine 

of German torpedo-craft and light cruisers were decoyed 
out to sea by the appearance and pretended flight of 
some English destroyers. (It has been declared but not 
officially confirmed that the " bait " consisted not of de- 
stroyers but two British submarines, which rose to the 
surface where one of them pretended to be disabled and 
was slowly towed away by the other till their pursuers 
were almost within range, when the line was cast off and 
both boats dived to safety.) The Germans found them- 
selves attacked by a larger British flotilla and a confused 
sort of battle followed. During the melee, an English 
cruiser lowered a whaleboat that picked up several sur- 
vivors of a sunken German vessel. The cruiser was then 
driven away by a more powerful German ship, and the 
crew of the whaleboat found themselves left in the 
enemy's waters without arms, food, or navigating instru- 
ments, Suddenly a periscope rose out of the water 
alongside, followed by the conning-tower and hull of the 
British submarine E-4, which took the Englishmen on 
board and left the Germans the whaleboat, after which 
both parties went home rejoicing. 

Shortly after this, the German submarine U-15 boldly 
attacked a British squadron, but revealed herself by the 
white wake of her periscope as it cut through the calm 
water. A beautifully aimed shot from the cruiser Bir- 
mingham smashed the periscope. The submarine dived, 
temporarily safe but blinded, for she was an old-fash- 
ioned craft with only one observation instrument. Her 
commander now essayed a swift " porpoise dive " up to 
the surface and down again, exposing only the conning- 
tower for a very few seconds. But a broadside blazed 




Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. 




Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Her 
3 



Engagement between the Birmingham and the U-15. 

1. Submarine's periscope shot away. 

2. Submarine dives, temporarily safe but blinded. 

3. Submarine exposes conning-tower. 

4. Conning-tower shot away, U-15 sinking. 



159 



160 The Story of the Submarine 

from the Birmingham, a shell struck squarely against the 
conning-tower, and the sea poured in through the ragged 
death-wound in the deck of the U-15. 

But these early affairs were now overshadowed as com- 
pletely as the first Union victories in West Virginia were 
overshadowed by Bull Run. Another British squadron 
encountered another German submarine and this time 
the periscope was not detected. Lieutenant-Commander 
Otto von Weddigen had had ample time to take up an 
ideal position beside the path of his enemies, who passed 
in slow and stately procession before the bow torpedo- 
tubes of the U-p. The German officer pressed a button 
and saw through his periscope the white path of the 
" Schwartzkopf " as it sped straight and true to the tall 
side of the Aboukir. He saw the cruiser heaved into the 
air by the shock of the bursting war-head, then watched 
her settle and go down. Round swung her nearest con- 
sort to the rescue, lowering her lifeboats as she came. 
But scarcely had the survivors of the Aboukir's company 
set foot on the deck of the Hogue than she, too, was 
torpedoed, and the half -naked men of both crews went 
tumbling down the slope of the upturned side as she 
rolled over and sank. Up steamed the Cressy, her gun- 
crews standing by their useless pieces, splendid in help- 
less bravery. Half reluctantly, von Weddigen sent his 
remaining foe to the bottom and slipped away under the 
waves, the victor of the strangest naval battle in history. 

Not a German had received the slightest injury ; four- 
teen hundred Englishmen had been killed. It was the 
loss of these trained officers and seamen, and not that of 
three old cruisers that would soon have been sent to the 



The Submarine in Action 16 1 

scrap heap, that was felt by the British navy. Realizing 
that no fears for their own lives would keep the officers 
of a British ship from attempting to rescue the drowning 
crew of another, the Admiralty issued the following or- 
der: 

" It has been necessary to point out for the future 
guidance of his Majesty's ships that the conditions that 
prevail when one vessel of a squadron is injured in a 
mine-field or exposed to submarine attack are analogous 
to those which occur in an action and that the rule of 
leaving disabled ships to their own resources is applicable, 
so far at any rate as large vessels are concerned. No act 
of humanity, whether to friend or foe, should lead to a 
neglect of the proper precautions and dispositions of 
war, and no measures can be taken to save life which 
prejudice the military situation." 

Another old cruiser, the Hermes, that had been 
turned into a floating base for sea-planes, was torpedoed 
off Dunkirk by a German submarine, most of the crew- 
being rescued by French torpedo boats. On New Year's 
day, 19 1 5, the battleship Formidable was likewise sent 
to the bottom of the English Channel. She too was a 
rather old ship, of the same class as the Bulwark, which 
had been destroyed by an internal explosion two weeks 
earlier in the Med way, and the Irresistible, afterwards 
sunk by a mine in the Dardanelles. 

But there w r as nothing small or old about the Auda- 
cious. She was — or is — a 24,800 ton superdread- 
nought, launched in 191 1 and carrying ten thirteen-and-a- 
half-inch guns. This stupendous war-engine was found 
rolling helpless in the Irish Sea, her after compartments 



162 The Story of the Submarine 

flooded by a great hole made either by a drifting mine 
or, what is more likely considering its position, by a tor- 
pedo from a German submarine. The White Star liner 
Olympic, which had been summoned by wireless, took 
the disabled warship in tow for several hours, after which 
the Audacious w^as cast off and abandoned. A photo- 
graph taken by one of the Olympic's passengers and after- 
wards widely circulated shows the huge ironclad down 
by the stern, listing heavily to one side, and apparently 
on the point of sinking. But her loss has never been ad- 
mitted by the British Admiralty, and it has been re- 
peatedly declared by reputable persons that the Audacious 
was kept afloat till the Olympic was out of sight, and was 
then towed by naval vessels into Belfast, where she was 
drydocked and repaired at Harland and Wolff's shipyard 
to be sent back to the fighting line. Her fate is one of 
the most interesting of the many mysteries of the war 
and will probably not be made clear till peace has come. 
The silence of the British Admiralty is explained by the 
standing orders forbidding the revealing of the where- 
abouts of any of his Majesty's ships, particularly when 
helpless and disabled. It should be noted in this connec- 
tion that the German government has never admitted the 
loss of the battleship Pommern which the Russians insist 
was sunk by one of their submarines in the Baltic. 

Because the overwhelming strength of the Allied fleet 
has kept the German and Austrian battleships safely 
locked up behind shore batteries, mine-fields and nettings, 
the Allies' submarines have had comparatively few tar- 
gets to try their skill on. The activity of the British 
submarines in the North Sea at the outbreak of the war 



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164 The Story of the Submarine 

has already been referred to, and a year later they found 
another opportunity in the Baltic. There the German 
fleet had the same preponderance over the Russian as the 
English had over the German battleships in the North 
Sea, but the British dreadnoughts could not be sent 
through the long tortuous passage of the Skagerrack and 
Cattegat, thick-sown with German mines, without cut- 
ting the British fleet in half and giving the Germans a 
splendid chance to defeat either half and then slip back 
through the Kiel Canal and destroy the other. So Eng- 
land sent some of her submarines instead. One of these 
joined the Russian squadron defending the Gulf of Riga 
against a German fleet and decided the fight by disabling 
the great battle-cruiser Moltke. Another, the E-13, ran 
ashore on the Danish island of Saltholm on August 19, 
191 5, and was warned by the commander of a Danish 
torpedo-boat that she would be allowed twenty- four 
hours to get off. Before the time-limit had expired and 
while three Danish torpedo-boats were standing by, two 
German destroyers steamed up, torpedoed the E-13, and 
killed half her crew by gun-fire : an outrageous violation 
of Denmark's neutrality. 1 

1 London, Jan. 4. — A British official statement issued to-day says : 

" Sir Edward Grey, secretary for foreign affairs, has answered the 
complaint by the Germans through the American embassies regarding 
the destruction off the coast of Ireland of a German submarine and 
crew, by the British auxiliary Barcdong, by referring to various Ger- 
man outrages. 

" Sir Edward Grey offers to submit such incidents, including the 
Baralong case, to an impartial tribunal composed, say, of officers of 
the United States navy. 

" The Foreign Office has presented to the House of Commons the 
full correspondence between Ambassador Page and Sir Edward Grey 
concerning the case. A memorandum from Germany concerning the 
sinking of the submarine includes affidavits from six Americans who 



The Submarine in Action 165 

Daredevil deeds have been done by the submarines of 
both sides in the Dardanelles. The little B-n swam up 
the straits, threading her way through mine-field after 
mine-field, her captain keeping his course by " dead- 
reckoning " with map and compass and stop watch. To 
have exposed his periscope would have drawn the fire 
of the many shore batteries, to have dived a few feet too 
far in those shallow waters would have meant running 
aground, to have misjudged the swirling, changing cur- 
rents might have meant annihilation. But Commander 
Holbrook brought his vessel safely through, torpedoed 
and sank the guard-ship Messudieh, a Turkish ironclad 
of the vintage of 1874, and returned to receive the Vic- 
toria Cross from his king and a gigantic " Iron Cross " 
from his brother officers. The E-11 went up even to 
Constantinople, torpedoed a Turkish transport within 
sight of the city and threw the whole waterfront into a 
panic. More transports and store-ships were sunk or 
driven on shore in the Sea of Marmora, a gunboat was 
torpedoed, and then the Kheyr-el-din, an old 10,000 ton 
battleship that had been the Kiirfiirst Freiderich Wil- 
helm before the kaiser sold her to Turkey, was sent to 
the bottom of the same waters by British submarines. 
One of them the E-15 ran aground in the Dardanelles and 
was forced to surrender to the Turks, but before they 
could float her off and make use of her, two steam 
launches dashed upstream through the fire of the shore 

were muleteers aboard the steamer Nicosian and witnessed the Bara- 
long's destruction of the submarine. A further affidavit from Lari- 
more Holland, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who was a member of the 
crew of the Baralong, was submitted. All the affidavits speak of the 
Baralong as disguised and flying the American flag." 



166 The Story of the Submarine 

batteries and torpedoed the stranded submarine as dish- 
ing blew up the Albemarle. 

But on the same day as the E-n's first exploit — May 
25, 191 5, the British battleship Triumph went down 
with most of her crew off Gallipoli, torpedoed by a Ger- 
man submarine. The U-51 had made the 2400 mile trip 
from the North Sea, using as tenders a number of small 
tank steamers flying the Spanish flag. These vessels in- 
tentionally drew the attention of the cordon of British 
destroyers drawn across the Straits of Gibraltar and 
were captured, while the submarine swam safely through 
and traversed the Mediterranean to the Dardanelles. 
Two days after her first exploit, the U-51 or perhaps 
one of her Austrian consorts, sank another British bat- 
tleship, the Majestic, off Gallipoli. The U-51 has been 
reported sunk by Russian warships in the Black Sea. 

If they could sink two battleships in three days, why 
did n't the German undersea boats sink a dozen or so 
more and raise the siege of the Dardanelles? Enver 
Pasha, the Turkish minister of war, declared that " the 
presence of the submarines destroyed all hopes of Rus- 
sia's ever effectively landing troops on the coast north 
of Constantinople." Then why did they permit the land- 
ing of British, Australian, New Zealand, and French 
troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula and the plains of 
ancient Troy? It was not until August, 191 5, that 
the transport Royal Edward was sunk in the Mediter- 
ranean by an Austrian submarine. Perhaps before this 
war is over some British transport may be torpedoed in 
the North Sea or the English Channel, but for more than 
a year and a half since its outbreak, troop-ships and 



168 The Story of the Submarine 

store-ships have been crossing to France as if there were 
not a hostile " U-boat ,5 in the world. Equally mysteri- 
ous has been the immunity of the light-draft monitors 
and obsolescent gunboats off the Flemish coast, where 
their heavy guns did so much to check the first German 
drive on Calais, and have harassed the invaders' right 
flank ever since. Many of these are mere floating plat- 
forms for one or two modern guns, all are slow-steam- 
ing, and they are not always in water too shallow for an 
undersea boat to swim in, yet none have been sunk by a 
submarine since the loss of the Hermes, in the autumn of 
19 14. Zeebrugge, the Belgian port that has been made 
the headquarters for German submarines in the North 
Sea, has been several times bombarded by the British 
fleet and, according to reports from Amsterdam, half- 
built submarines on the shore there have been destroyed 
by shell-fire. Why did the completed undersea boats in 
the harbor fail to come out and torpedo or drive away the 
attacking fleet ? We have been shown what modern sub- 
marines can do; what prevents them from doing much 
more? 

Shortly after von Weddigen's great exploit, a German 
submarine rose to the surface so near the British de- 
stroyer Badger that before the undersea boat could sub- 
merge again she was rammed, cut open and sunk. One 
of the most picturesque and least expected features of 
this war has been the revival of old ways; soldiers are 
again wearing breastplates and metal helmets and fighting 
with crossbows and catapults, while against the modern 
submarine, seamen are effectively using the most ancient 
of all naval weapons : the ram. It takes two minutes for 



The Submarine in Action 169 

the average undersea boat to submerge, during which 
time a thirty-knot destroyer can come charging up from 
a mile away, with a good chance of scoring a hit with 
her forward 3- or 4-inch gun, even if she gets there too 
late to ram. In the case of the U-12, the submarine 
dived deep enough to get her hull and superstructure out 
of harm's way, only to have the top of her conning- 
tower crushed in by the destroyer as it passed over her. 
When the inrush of water forced the U-12 to rise to the 
surface and surrender, her crew discovered that the main 
hatch could not be opened because one of the periscopes 
had been bent down across it. Some of them succeeded 
in climbing out of the torpedo-hatch and jumping over- 
board before the U-12 went down for good. As she 
sank stern foremost, it was observed that both of her 
bow-tubes were empty; evidence that she had vainly 
launched two torpedoes at the British flotilla that were 
hunting her down. Though several British destroyers 
and torpedo-boats have been sent to the bottom by Ger- 
man submarines, and the English E-p has sunk the Ger- 
man destroyer S-126, yet the nimble surface torpedo- 
craft have usually proved too difficult for the undersea 
boats to hit with their fixed tubes that can only fire 
straight ahead or astern. 

It has been pointed out that the Aboukir, Cressy and 
Hogue, the Formidable, and the Audacious were all mov- 
ing slowly and unescorted by any destroyers when they 
were attacked and sunk. The same was true of the Leon 
Gambetta and the Giuseppe Garibaldi, when they were 
sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean by Austrian sub- 
marines. Under modern conditions, such isolated big 



170 The Story of the Submarine 

ships are in much the same perilous position as would 
have been a lonely battery of Union artillery marching 
through a country swarming with Confederate cavalry. 
While an escort of destroyers is no sure guarantee 
against submarine attack, their presence certainly seems 
to act as a powerful deterrent. 

Waters suspected of containing hostile submarines are 
swept, very much as they would be for mines, by pairs 
of destroyers or steam trawlers, dragging an arrangement 
of strong cables between them. Sometimes this is fes- 
tooned with explosives to blow in the side of any under- 
sea boat it may touch. Usually the vessels engaged in 
this work use a large net. When they feel the weight 
of a catch, it is said that they let go the ends and leave 
it to the submarine's own twin propellers to entangle 
themselves thoroughly. An undersea boat so entrapped 
is helpless to do anything but either sink or else empty 
her tanks and try to rise and surrender. A submarine 
in trouble usually sends up notification in the form of 
large quantities of escaping oil and gas. 

Inventors have been busy devising new kinds of traps, 
snares, and exaggerated lobster-pots to be placed in the 
waters about the British Isles. How many German sub- 
marines have poked their noses into these devices prob- 
ably not even the British Admiralty could tell, if it was 
so minded, but the traps are said to have been put down 
very plentifully and most of the published designs are 
extremely ingenious. 

Individual torpedo-nets for ships have rather gone out 
of fashion, but the most effective way of keeping sub- 
marines out of a harbor is to close its entrance with 



The Submarine in Action 171 

booms and nettings. The principal naval bases on both 
sides are undoubtedly so protected. It has been persist- 
ently reported that the immunity of British transports 
crossing the channel is due to a double line of booms, nets 
and mines stretching from one shore to the other, and 
enclosing a broad, safe channel outside which the " U- 
boats " roam hungrily. There would seem to be no great 
difficulty in building such a barrier, but it would be ex- 
tremely difficult to keep intact in heavy weather and for 
that reason most of our naval officers are skeptical of its 
existence. 

Microphones which have been placed under water off 
the coasts of France, Great Britain, and Ireland have 
succeeded in detecting the presence of submarines at a 
distance of fifty-five miles. This device has been per- 
fected by the joint labors of an American electrical en- 
gineer, Mr. William Dubilier, and Professor Tissot of 
the French Academy of Science. These two gentlemen, 
experimenting with microphones and a submarine placed 
at their disposal by the French government, " discovered 
in the course of the tests that the underwater craft 
were sources of sound waves of exceedingly high fre- 
quency, quite distinctive from any other subaqueous 
sounds. While the cause of the high-pitched sound is 
known to the inventors, it cannot be divulged since it 
would then be possible for German submarine construc- 
tors to eliminate the source of the tell-tale sound waves, 
and thus render void the purpose of the detector installa- 
tion." x 

These microphones, it is believed, are usually arranged 

1 " Scientific American," October 16, 1915. 



172 The Story of the Submarine 

in a semicircle. Each instrument records sound waves 
best when they come from one particular direction. The 
operator on shore, listening to a device that eliminates all 
other sounds coming in from under the sea, can tell by 
the way a passing submarine affects the different micro- 
phones in the semicircle how far off and in what direction 
it is moving, and so warns and summons the ever- 
watchful patrol boats. 

Air craft are doubtless being much used in the hunt 
for submarines, for an aviator at a height of several 
hundred feet can distinctly see a submarine swimming 
beneath him in clear water with a good light reflected 
from the bottom. Early in the war, the pilot and ob- 
server of a " Taube " that was brought down in the 
North Sea were rescued by a British submarine. In the 
attack on Cuxhaven a combined force of submarines, sea- 
planes, and light cruisers was resisted by the German 
shore-batteries, destroyers, " U-boats " aeroplanes and 
Zeppelins. As the British sea-planes returned from 
dropping bombs on the Cuxhaven navy yard or taking 
observations above the Kiel Canal, some of them were 
shot down by the Germans but the aviators were picked 
up, as had been arranged beforehand, by English sub- 
marines. In the spring of 1915 there was an engage- 
ment between a Zeppelin and a British submarine in 
which each side claimed the victory. On August 26 
of the same year the secretary of the British Admiralty 
announced : 

" Squadron Commander Arthur Bigsworth, R.N., de- 
stroyed single-handed a German submarine this morning 
by bombs dropped from an aeroplane. The submarine 




Copyright, Illustrated London News & Flying. 



Photograph of a submarine, twenty feet below the surface, taken 
from the aeroplane, whose shadow is shown in the picture. 



173 



174 The Story of the Submarine 

was observed to be completely wrecked, and sank off Os- 
tend. 

" It is not the practice of the Admiralty to publish 
statements regarding the losses of German submarines, 
important though they have been, in cases where the 
enemy has no other source of information as to the time 
and place at which these losses have occurred. In the 
case referred to above, however, the brilliant feat of 
Squadron Commander Bigsworth was performed in the 
immediate neighborhood of the coast in occupation of the 
enemy and the position of the sunken submarine has been 
located by a German destroyer." 

" This is inexact," replied the German Admiralty. 
" The submarine was attacked, but not hit and returned 
to port undamaged. One of our submarines on August 
1 6 destroyed by gunfire the benzol factory with the at- 
tached benzol warehouses and coke furnaces near Har- 
rington, England. The statement of the English press 
that the submarine attacked the open towns of Harring- 
ton, Parton, and Whitehaven is inexact." 

Equally interesting but unfortunately lacking in de- 
tails are the reports from the Adriatic of submarines fight- 
ing submarines. There have been three such duels, in 
one an Austrian sank an Italian submarine, in another 
the Italian was victorious, while after the third both 
were found lying on the bottom, each torn open by the 
other's torpedo. As it is a physical impossibility for the 
pilot of one submarine to see another under the water, 
it would seem as if at least one of the combatants in 
each of these fights must have been running on the sur- 
face at the time. 



The Submarine in Action 175 

Both Mr. Simon Lake and the late John P. Holland 
were absolutely confident that submarines could not fight 
submarines, that surface craft would be utterly unable 
to injure or resist them, and that therefore the subma- 
rine boat would make naval warfare impossible and do 
more than anything else to bring about permanent 
peace. 

All that can be said at present is that the actual situa- 
tion is much more complex than had been expected. 
Submarines have sunk many surface warships but have 
suffered heavily themselves. The German government 
has admitted the loss of over a dozen " U-boats," while 
the unofficial estimates of their enemies' run as high as 
thirty-five or fifty German submarines destroyed or cap- 
tured. Admiral Beatty's victorious squadron, pursuing 
the German battle-cruisers after the second North Sea 
fight, turned and retreated at the wake of a single tor- 
pedo and the glimpse of hostile periscopes. But the sub- 
marine has not yet driven the surface warship from the 
seas and it has signally failed against transports. Its 
moral effect has been very great : British submarines have 
terrorized the citizens of Constantinople; while the vic- 
tories of their beloved " U-boats " have cheered the Ger- 
man people as the victories of our frigates cheered us 
in 1812, and have been a somewhat similar shock to the 
nerves of the British navy. But that sturdy organization 
has recovered from more than one attack of nerves. 
And as the war goes on, it becomes increasingly clear 
that it is unfair to expect unsupported submarines, any 
more than unsupported frigates a century ago, to do the 
work of an entire navy. Like the aeroplane, the sub- 



176 The Story of the Submarine 

marine was first derided as useless, next hailed as a com- 
plete substitute for all other arms, then found to be an 
indispensable auxiliary, whose scope and value are now 
being determined. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE SUBMARINE BLOCKADE 

" It is true that submarine boats have improved, but they are 
as useless as ever. Nevertheless, the German navy is carefully 
watching their progress, • though it has no reason to make 
experiments itself." 

Admiral von Tirpitz, in 1901. 

" DANGER ! 

Being the Log of Captain John Sirius 

by 

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. " 

IF you have not read the above-mentioned story by the 
author of Sherlock Holmes, I advise you to go to the 
nearest public library and ask for it. For those that 
cannot spare the time to do this, here are a brief outline 
and a few quotations. 

Captain John Sirius is supposed to be chief of sub- 
marines in the navy of Norland, a small European king- 
dom at war with England. With only eight submarines, 
he establishes a blockade of Great Britain and begins 
sinking all ships bringing in food. He enters a French 
harbor, though France is at peace with his country, and 
sinks three British ships that have taken refuge there. 

" I suppose/' says the captain, " they thought they 
were safe in French waters but what did I care about 

*77 



178 The Story of the Submarine 

three-mile limits and international law! The view of 
my government was that England was blockaded, food 
contraband, and vessels carrying it to be destroyed. The 
lawyers could argue about it afterwards. My business 
was to starve the enemy any way I could/' 

Presently he overtook an American ship and sank her 
by gunfire as her skipper shouted protests over the rail. 

" It was all the same to me w r hat flag she flew so long 
as she was engaged in carrying contraband of war to the 
British Isles. ... Of course I knew there would be a 
big row afterwards and there was." 

" The terror I had caused had cleared the Channel." 

"There was talk of a British invasion (of Norland) 
but I knew this to be absolute nonsense, for the British 
had learned by this time that it would be sheer murder 
to send transports full of soldiers to sea in the face of 
submarines. When they have a Channel tunnel, they 
can use their fine expeditionary force upon the Continent 
but until then it might not exist so far as Europe is con- 
cerned." 

" Heavens, what would England have done against a 
foe with thirty or forty submarines?" 

The British navy could do nothing to stop Captain 
John Sirius. One of his submarines was sunk by an 
armed liner, but with the remaining seven he sank the 
Olympic and so many other vessels that no one dared 
try to bring food into Great Britain. At the end of six 
weeks, fifty thousand people there had died of starvation 
and the British government had to make peace with Nor- 
land and pay for all the damage the submarines had 
done to neutrals. 



The Submarine Blockade 179 

As a warning to his countrymen, Sir Arthur Conan 
Doyle wrote this story in May, 1914. Before it was 
published, 1 England was at war with Germany. On 
February 4, 19 15, the famous " War Zone Decree " was 
published in Berlin. 

" The waters around Great Britain, including the 
whole of the English Channel, are declared hereby to be 
included within the zone of war, and after the 18th inst, 
all enemy merchant vessels encountered in these waters 
will be destroyed, even if it may not be possible always 
to save their crews and passengers. 

' Within this war-zone neutral vessels are exposed to 
danger since, in view of the misuse of the neutral flags 
ordered by the government of Great Britain on the 31st 
ult, and of the hazards of naval warfare, neutral ships 
cannot always be prevented from suffering from the at- 
tacks intended for enemy ships. 

" The routes of navigation around the north of the 
Shetland Islands in the eastern part of the North Sea 
and in a strip thirty miles wide along the Dutch coast 
are not open to the danger-zone/ ' 

But those routes had been closed three months before 
by the British government, which declared that it had 
had the North Sea planted with anchored contact mines, 
but that all ships trading to neutral ports would, if they 
first called at some British port, be given safe conduct to 
Holland or Scandinavia, by way of the English Channel. 
This way would run through the proposed " war-zone." 

International law says nothing about either " war- 
zones " or submarines. In all probability, special rules 
1 In " Collier's Weekly/' August 22, and 29, 1914. 



180 The Story of the Submarine 

for undersea warfare will be drawn up by a conference 
of delegates from the leading countries of the world 
soon after the end of the present war. But till then, 
no such conference can be held, and the United States 
has always maintained, even when it has been to its dis- 
advantage to do so, that no one nation can change in- 
ternational law to suit herself. We insist that the game 
be played according to the rules. A submarine has no 
more rights than any other warship. It may sink a mer- 
chantman if the latter tries to fight or escape. If the 
captured vessel is found to be carrying contraband to the 
enemy's country, the warship may either take her into 
port as a prize or, if this is impracticable, sink her. But 
before an unarmed and unresisting merchant vessel can 
be sunk, the passengers and crew must be given time and 
opportunity to escape. 

President Wilson gave notice on February 10, 191 5, 
that if, by act of the commander of any German war- 
ship, an American vessel or the lives of American citizens 
should be lost on the high seas, the United States " would 
be constrained to hold the Imperial government of Ger- 
many to a strict accountability for such acts of their 
naval authorities and to take any steps that might be 
necessary to safeguard American lives and property and 
to secure to American citizens the full enjoyments of 
their acknowledged rights on the high seas." 

On the same day, a note to Great Britain voiced our 
objection to the " explicit sanction by a belligerent gov- 
ernment for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag 
of a neutral power within certain portions of the high 



The Submarine Blockade 181 

seas which are presumed to be frequented with hostile 
warships." 

To this Sir Edward Grey replied that " the British 
government have no intention of advising their merchant 
shipping to use foreign flags as a general practice or re- 
sort to them otherwise than for escaping capture or de- 
struction." 

Such " sailing under false colors " to fool the enemy's 
cruisers is an old and well-established right of merchant- 
men of belligerent countries. Its abuse, under present- 
day conditions, however, might have given the German 
submarine commanders a plausible excuse for sinking 
neutral vessels. To avoid this, neutral shipowners be- 
gan to paint the name, port, and national colors on the 
broadside of each of their steamers, plain enough to be 
read from afar through a periscope. 

Then the time came for the war-zone decree to be put 
into effect, and the world watched with great interest 
and no little apprehension to see what the submarine 
blockaders could do. 

Seven British ships were sunk during the first six days. 
Then came a lull, followed by the announcement by the 
British Admiralty that between February 23 to March 3, 
3805 transoceanic ships had arrived at British ports, 669 
had cleared and none had been lost, while two German 
submarines had been sunk. During the eleven weeks be- 
tween the establishing of the blockade and the sinking. of 
the Lasitania, forty-two oversea vessels and twenty-eight 
fishing boats of British registry had been sunk by the 
submarines, but 16,190 liners and freighters had safely 



182 The Story of the Submarine 

run the blockade. The largest number of vessels sunk 
by the " U-boats " in any one week was thirty-six, be- 




Copyright, London Sphere & N. Y. Herald. 

German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman. 

(Note stern torpedo-tubes, and funnel for carrying off exhaust from 
Diesel engine.) 

tween June 23 and 30 ; while nineteen British merchant- 
men, with a total tonnage of 76,000, and three fishing 



The Submarine Blockade 183 

vessels were destroyed either by submarines or mines 
during the week ending August 25. The total number 
sunk in the first six months was 485. But with more 
than fifteen hundred ships coming and going every week, 
the submarine blockade of the British Isles was ob- 
viously a failure. 

It was a costly failure from the military point of 
view. The expenditure of torpedoes alone must have 
been considerable and a modern Whitehead or Schwartz- 
kopf costs from five to eight thousand dollars and takes 
several months to build. How many of the " U-boats " 
themselves have fallen prey to the British patroling craft, 
traps, mines, and drag-nets cannot be computed with any 
accuracy, but by the first of September, 1915, the num- 
ber declared to be lost " on the authority of a high of- 
ficial in the British Admiralty " ran anywhere from 
thirty to fifty. Even if she has been completing a new 
submarine every week since the war began, Germany 
cannot afford the loss of so much material, and still, less, 
of so many trained men. Captain Persius, one of the 
foremost German writers on naval affairs, pointed this 
out in a newspaper article that brought a hurricane of 
angry criticism about his ears. How great has been the 
wear and tear on the nervous systems of the submarine 
crews is show T n by the following extract from the state- 
ment of Captain Hansen of the captured U-16. 

" It is fearfully trying on the nerves. Not every man 
can endure it. While running under the sea there is 
deathlike stillness in the boats, as the electrical machinery 
is noiseless. ... As the air becomes heated it gets poor 
and mixed with the odor of oil from the machinery. 



184 The Story of the Submarine 

The atmosphere becomes fearful. An overpowering 
sleepiness often attacks new men and one requires the 
utmost will power to keep awake. I have had men who 
did not want to eat during the first three days out be- 
cause they did not want to lose that amount of time from 
sleep. Day after day spent in such cramped quarters, 
where there is hardly room to stretch your legs, and re- 
maining constantly on the alert, is a tremendous strain 
on the nerves." 

But if there is discomfort below the surface there is 
peril of death above. Yet a submarine must spend as 
much time as possible on top of the water, even off the 
enemy's coast, to spare the precious storage batteries and 
let the Diesel engines grind oil into electricity by using 
the electric motor as a dynamo. If she could renew her 
batteries under water or pick up a useable supply of cur- 
rent as she can pick up a drum of oil from a given spot 
on the sea-bottom, then the modern submarine would in- 
deed be a hard fish to catch. As it is, great ingenuity 
has been shown by the German skippers in minimizing 
the dangers of surface cruising and at the same time 
stalking their prey. One big submarine masqueraded 
as a steamer, with dummy masts and funnel. Inno- 
cent-looking steam trawlers flying neutral flags acted as 
screens and lookouts, besides carrying supplies. One of 
these boldly entered a British harbor, where it was no- 
ticed that her decks were cumbered with very many coils 
of rope. The authorities investigated and found snugly 
stowed in the center of each a large can of fuel-oil. An- 
other trawler, flying the Dutch flag, was stopped in the 



The Submarine Blockade 185 

North Sea by a British cruiser and searched by a board- 
ing-party. They were going back into their boat, after 
finding everything apparently as it should be, when one 
of the Englishmen noticed a mysterious pipe sticking 
out of the trawler's side. They swarmed on board 
again and discovered that the fishing-boat had a complete 
double hull, the space between being filled with oil. The 
trawler's crew were removed to the cruiser and a strong 
detachment of bluejackets left in their place. A few 
hours afterwards, there was a swirl of water alongside 
and a German submarine came up for refreshments. 
It was promptly captured and so was another that pres- 
ently followed it: a good day's catch for one small fish- 
ing-boat. 

Because of the uncertainty and danger of depending 
on underwater caches and tenders, each blockader usually 
returned at the end of two or three weeks to Heligoland, 
Zeebruge, Ostend, or some other base to take on sup- 
plies, report progress and rest the crew. This of course 
reduces the number of submarines actually on guard. 
How large that number may have been at any particular 
time since the blockade began is unknown to everybody 
except a few persons in Berlin. At the outbreak of the 
war, Germany had between twenty and twenty-five sub- 
marines in commission and a dozen or so under construc- 
tion. If, as is claimed, the Germans have been complet- 
ing a new undersea boat every week since the war began, 
that would have given them by August 1, 191 5, a flotilla 
of seventy-seven, exclusive of losses. If only thirty had 
been lost, that would have left fewer than fifty subma- 



186 The Story of the Submarine 

fines to blockade more than fifty seaports, great and 
small, scattered over more than twenty-five hundred miles 
of coast. 

Moreover, these widely scattered blockaders would 
have to be on duty by night as well as by day. But at 
night or in fog the periscope is useless; to intercept an 
incoming steamer, running swiftly and without lights, 
the submarine must rise and cruise on the surface. It 
cannot use a searchlight to locate the blockade-runner 
without consuming much precious voltage and at the 
same time attracting the nearest patrol-boat. 

The same disadvantages apply to sending wireless mes- 
sages from one blockading submarine to another. And 
as the wireless apparatus of an undersea boat is neces- 
sarily low-powered and has a narrow radius, while " os- 
cillators/' bells, and other underwater signaling devices 
are still in their infancy, it would seem as if the German 
" U-boats " in British waters must have been suffering 
from lack of cooperation and team-play. If the captain 
of a Union gunboat, lying off Charleston during the Civil 
War, caught a glimpse of a blockade runner, he could 
alarm the rest of the fleet with rockets and signal guns, 
but the commander of the U-99 off Queenstown cannot 
count on his consorts if he himself fails to sink an ap- 
proaching liner. 

Perhaps the most notable shortcoming of the subma- 
rine blockade has been its failure to inspire terror. Con- 
trary to the expectations of nearly every forecaster from 
Robert Fulton to Conan Doyle, the sinking of the first 
merchant vessels by submarines failed to frighten away 
any others. Cargo rates are high in war-time and in- 



The Submarine Blockade 187 

surance covers the owners' risk, so few sailing orders 
were canceled. As for the captains, they are not noted 
for timidity, and professional pride is strong among 
them; most of them have families to provide for, and 
every one of them knows that behind him stands an 
eager young mate with a master's ticket, ready to take 
the risk and take out the ship if the skipper quits. So 
the merchant marine accepted the submarine as one of 
the risks of the trade. 

When a big German submarine rose up off the Irish 
coast within easy gunshot of the homeward-bound 
British steamer Anglo-Calif ornian and signaled for her 
to heave to, the plucky English skipper slammed his en- 
gine-room telegraph over to " Full speed ahead." Away 
dashed the steamer and after her came the submarine, 2 
making good practice with her 8.8 centimeter gun. 
Twenty shrapnel shells burst over the Anglo-Calif ornian, 
riddling her upper works, slaughtering thirty of her 
cargo of horses, killing seven of her crew and wound- 
ing eight more. Steering with his own hands, Captain 
Archibald Panlow held his vessel on her course till a 
shrapnel bullet killed him, when the wheel was taken by 
his son, the second mate, who brought the Anglo-Cali- 
f ornian safely into Queenstown. It is men of this breed 
who have kept Admiral von Tirpitz from saying, in the 
words of the fictitious Captain John Sirius, 

2 This submarine was the U-39. On board her was an American 
boy, Carl Frank List, who was taken off a Norwegian ship and 
spent eleven days on the U-39, during which time she sank eleven 
ships. In each case the crew were given ample time to take to the 
boats. List's intensely interesting narrative appeared in the " New 
York American " for September 3, 5, and 7, 1915. 



188 The Story of the Submarine 

"The terror I had caused had cleared the channel." 

But because the " Campaign of Frightfulness " has 
failed and a few score of unsupported submarines have 
been unable to blockade the British Isles, it is stupid to 
pretend that there has been no progress since 1901 and 
say as Admiral von Tirpitz said then, 

" Submarines are as useless as ever." 

Like every other type of naval craft, submarines are 
useful but not omnipotent. We have seen what they can 
do in action and what they have failed to do. As 
scouts in the enemy's waters they are invaluable. As 
commerce destroyers, they do the work of the swift-sail- 
ing privateers of a century ago. In the fall of 191 5, 
British submarines in the Baltic almost put a stop to the 
trade between Germany and Sw r eden. But to blockade 
a coast effectively, submarines must have tenders, which 
must have destroyers and light cruisers to defend them, 
which in turn require the support of battle-cruisers and 
dreadnoughts, with their attendant host of colliers, hos- 
pital ships and air-scouts. Nor can a coast be long de- 
fended by submarines, mine-fields and shore-batteries, if 
there are not enough trained troops to keep the enemy, 
who can always land at some remote spot, from march- 
ing round to the rear of the coast-defenses. This war 
is simply repeating the old, old lesson that there are no 
cheap and easy substitutes for a real army and a real 
navy. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE SUBMARINE AND NEUTRALS 

BOTH Admiral von Tirpitz and the Austrian Ad- 
miralty seem to have begun their submarine cam- 
paigns after the method of Captain John Sirius : to starve 
the enemy any way they could and let the lawyers argue 
about it afterwards. From the beginning of the block- 
ade, Scandinavian, Dutch, and Spanish vessels, even when 
bound from one neutral port to another, were torpedoed 
and sunk without warning by the German submarines. 
Their governments protested vigorously but without ef- 
fect. Then came the turn of the United States. 

The Falaba, a small British passenger steamer outward 
bound from Liverpool to the west coast of Africa was 
pursued and overtaken off the coast of Wales on March 
28, 191 5, by the fast German submarine U-28. Realiz- 
ing that their vessel would be sunk but expecting that 
their lives would be spared, the crew and passengers be- 
gan filling and lowering away the boats as rapidly as pos- 
sible but without panic. The wireless operator had been 
sending calls for help but ceased when ordered to by the 
captain of the U-28. No patrol boats were in sight and 
the submarine was standing by on the surface, with both 
gun and torpedo-tubes trained on the motionless steamer 
and in absolute command of the situation. Without the 
slightest excuse or warning, a torpedo was then dis- 

189 



190 The Story of the Submarine 

charged and exploded against the Falabafs side, directly 
beneath a half-lowered and crowded lifeboat. The life- 
boat was blown to pieces and the steamer sunk, with the 
loss of one hundred and twelve lives, including that of 
an American citizen, Mr. Leon C. Thrasher, of Hard- 
wick, Massachusetts. 




Photo by Brown Bros. 

British Submarine, showing one type of disappearing deck-gun 

now in use. 

This cold-blooded slaughter of the helpless horrified 
the rest of the world and did Germany's cause an in- 
calculable amount of harm. The German people were 
in no state of mind to realize this, for they had gone 
literally submarine-mad. They rejoiced in the cartoons 
depicting John Bull marooned on his island or dragged 
under and drowned by the swarming " U-boats." They 



The Submarine and Neutrals 191 

sincerely believed that within a few months the power of 
the British navy would be broken forever and that in the 
meanwhile the German submarines could do no wrong. 
This feeling was presently intensified by the loss of their 
hero, the gallant von Weddigen. Decorated, together 
with every man of his crew, with the Iron Cross and pro- 
moted to the command of a fine new submarine, the 
U-29, he did effective work as a blockader and captured 
and sank several prizes, but only after carefully remov- 
ing those on board. Then the U-29 was sunk with all 
hands, by an armed patrol boat, the British declare: 
treacherously, the German people believe, by a mer- 
chant ship whose crew von Weddigen was trying to 
spare. 1 

No attempt was made to warn the American tank 
steamer Giilfiigkt, bound for Rouen, France, with a con- 
traband cargo of oil, when she was torpedoed by a Ger- 
man submarine on May 1. The vessel stayed afloat but 
the wireless operator and one of the sailors, terrified by 
the shock, jumped overboard and were both drowned, 
while the captain died of heart failure a few hours later 
on board the British patrol boat that took off the crew 
and brought the Gulfiigkt into port. 

On the same day that the Gulflight was torpedoed, 
these two advertisements appeared together in the New 
York newspapers : 

1 " Von Weddigen, I was told, met his death chasing an armed 
British steamer. Commanding the U-29, he went after a whale of 
a British freighter in the Irish Sea, signaled her to stop. She 
stopped but hoisted the Spanish flag. As he came alongside, the 
steamer let drive with her two four-point-sevens at the sub- 
marine, sinking it immediately." Statement of Carl Frank List. 



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NOTICE! 

TRAVELERS intending to embark on the At- 
lantic voyage are reminded that a state of war 
exists between Germany and her allies and Great 
Britain and her allies; that the zone of war in- 
cludes the waters adjacent to the British isles; 
that, in accordance with formal notice given by 
the Imperial German Government, vessels flying 
the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, 
are liable to destruction in those waters and that 
travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great 
Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. 
IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY, 
WASHINGTON, D. C., APRIL 22, 1915. 

192 



The Submarine and Neutrals 193 

This warning was not taken seriously. It was pointed 
out that the German submarines had sunk only com- 
paratively small and slow steamers, and generally be- 
lieved that it would be impossible for them to hit a fast- 
moving vessel. Not a single passenger canceled his pas- 
sage on the Lusitania, though all admitted that the Ger- 
mans would have a perfect right to sink her if they 
could, as she was laden with rifle-cartridges and shell- 
cases for the Allies. But every passenger knew that he 
had a perfect right to be taken off first, and trusted to 
the Government that had given him his passports to 
maintain it. 

The Lusitania left New York on the first of May. At 
two o'clock on the afternoon of Friday, May 7, she was 
about ten miles from the Irish coast, off the Old Head 
of Kinsale, and running slowly to avoid reaching Queens- 
town at an unfavorable turn of the tide, when Captain 
Turner and many others saw a periscope rise out of the 
water about half a mile away. 

" I saw a torpedo speeding toward us," declared the 
captain afterwards, " and immediately I tried to change 
our course, but was unable to manoeuver out of the way. 
There was a terrible impact as the torpedo struck the 
starboard side of the vessel, and a second torpedo fol- 
lowed almost immediately. This one struck squarely 
over the boilers. 

" I tried to turn the Lusitania shoreward, hoping to 
beach her, but her engines were crippled and it was im- 
possible. 

' There has been some criticism because I did not 
order the lifeboats out sooner, but no matter what may 



194 The Story of the Submarine 

be done there are always some to criticize. Until the 
Lusitania came to a standstill it was absolutely impos- 
sible to launch the boats — they would have been 
swamped. " 

The great ship heeled over to port so rapidly that by 
the time she could be brought to a stop it was no longer 
possible to lower the boats on the starboard side. There 
was no panic-stricken rush for the boats that could be 
lowered ; all was order and seemliness and quiet heroism. 
Alfred Vanderbilt stripped off the lifebelt that might 
have saved him and buckled it about a woman; Lindon 
Bates, Jr., was last seen trying to save three children. 
Elbert Hubbard, Charles Klein, Justus Miles Forman, 
and more than a hundred other Americans died, and died 
bravely. As the Lusitania went down beneath them, 
Charles Frohman smiled at his companion and said : 

" Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure 
of life.^ 

" I turned around to watch the great ship heel over," 
said a passenger who had dived overboard and swum to 
a safe distance. 

" The monster took a sudden plunge, and I saw a 
crowd still on her decks, and boats filled with helpless 
women and children glued to her side. I sickened with 
horror at the sight. 

" There was a thunderous roar, as of the collapse 
of a great building on fire; then she disappeared, drag- 
ging with her hundreds of fellow-creatures into the vor- 
tex. Many never rose to the surface, but the sea rapidly 
grew thick with the figures of struggling men and 
women and children." 



The Submarine and Neutrals 195 

The total number of deaths was more than a thou- 
sand. 

The most fitting comment on the sinking of the Lusi- 
tania were the words of Tinkling Cloud, a full-blooded 
Sioux Indian: 

" Now you white men can never call us red men sav- 
ages again." 

Resting its case on " Many sacred principles of justice 
and humanity/' refusing to accept the warning published 
in the advertising columns of the newspapers by the 
German embassy either " as an excuse or palliation/' -and 
assuming that the commanders of submarines guilty of 
torpedoing without warning vessels carrying non-com- 
batants had acted " under a misapprehension of orders/' 
the United States concluded its note to Germany, six 
days after the sinking of the Lusitania, with these words 
of warning: 

" The Imperial German government will not expect 
the government of the United States to omit any word 
or act necessary to the performance of its sacred duty of 
maintaining the rights of the United States and its citi- 
zens and of safeguarding their free exercise and enjoy- 
ment/' 

Before any reply had been made to this, a German 
submarine torpedoed without warning the American 
freight steamer Nebraskan, on May 25, a few hours 
after she had left Liverpool in ballast for the United 
States. Fortunately no lives were lost, and although 
the Nebraskan 's bow T s had been blown wide open by the 
explosion, she remained afloat and was brought back to 
Liverpool under her own steam. The attack was tardily 



196 The Story of the Submarine 

admitted by Germany and explained by the fact that it 
had been made at dusk, when the commander of the sub- 
marine had been unable to recognize the steamer's na- 
tionality. 

On the last day of May, Germany's answer was re- 
ceived. The Imperial government declared that the 
Lusitania had not been an unarmed merchantman but an 
auxiliary cruiser of the British navy. That she had had 
masked guns mounted on her lower deck, that she had 
Canadian troops among her passengers, and that in vio- 
lation of American law she had been laden with high 
explosives which were the real cause of her destruction 
because they were set off by the detonation of the single 
torpedo that had been discharged by the submarine. 

To these allegations, unaccompanied by the slightest 
proof and contradicted by the testimony both of British 
and American eye-w T itnesses, the United States replied 
calmly and categorically. It was pointed out that if the 
German ambassador at Washington or the German con- 
sul at New York had complained to the Federal authori- 
ties before the Lusitania sailed and either guns or troops 
had been found concealed on her, she would have been 
interned. The statement of Mr. Dudley Field Malone, 
collector of the Port of New York, that the Lusitania 
was not armed, may be accepted as final. Gustav Stahl, 
the German reservist who signed an affidavit that he had 
seen guns on board her, later pleaded guilty to a charge 
of perjury and was sentenced to eighteen months in a 
Federal penitentiary. As for her cargo, every passenger 
train and steamer in this country is allowed to transport 
boxes of revolver and rifle cartridges — the only ex- 



The Submarine and Neutrals 197 

plosives carried on the Lusitania — because it is ex- 
tremely difficult to set off any number of them together, 
either by heat or concussion. 

Dropping these points, Germany then pledged the 
safety of American ships in the war zone, if distinctly 
marked, and to facilitate American travel offered to per- 
mit the United States to hoist its flag on four belligerent 
passenger steamers. This, if accepted, would by im- 
plication have made Americans fair game anywhere else 
on the high seas, and was accordingly rejected in the 
strong American note of July 21. 

" The rights of neutrals in time of war/' declared 
President Wilson through the medium of Secretary Lan- 
sing, " are based upon principle, not upon expediency, 
and the principles are immutable. It is the duty and 
obligation of belligerents to find a way to adapt the new 
circumstances to them. 

" The events of the past two months have clearly in- 
dicated that it is possible and practicable to conduct such 
submarine operations as have characterized the activity 
of the Imperial German naval commanders within the 
so-called war-zone in substantial accord with the accepted 
practices of regulated warfare. The whole world has 
looked with interest and increasing satisfaction at the 
demonstration of that possibility by German naval com- 
manders. It is manifestly possible, therefore, to lift 
the whole practice of submarine attack above the criti- 
cism which it has aroused and remove the chief causes 
of offense." 

Repetition by the commanders of German naval ves- 
sels of acts contravening neutral rights " must be re- 



198 The Story of the Submarine 

garded by the Government of the United States, where 
they effect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly." 

On July 9, a German submarine discharged a torpedo 
at the west-bound Cunard liner Ordiina, narrowly 
missed her, rose to the surface and fired some twenty 
shells before the steamer got out of range. Fortunately, 
none of these took effect. There were American pas- 
sengers on board and nothing but bad marksmanship 
averted another Lusitania horror. 

Three days later, another German submarine stopped 
an American freight steamer, the Leelanlaw, and had her 
visited and searched by a boarding party, who reported 
that she was carrying contraband to Great Britain. Be- 
cause the vessel could not be taken into a German port 
and there was no time to throw her cargo overboard, 
the crew w 7 ere taken off and she was sunk. 

Here was a perfectly proper procedure, where no neu- 
tral lives had been endangered and the question of the 
damage to property could be settled amicably in a court 
of law. It was to the practice in the Leelanlaw case 
that President Wilson referred to so hopefully in his 
note of July 21. Though the weeks went by without any 
answer from Germany, it was hoped that the Imperial 
government had quietly amended the orders to its sub- 
marine commanders and that no more passenger ships 
would be attacked without warning. 

But on the 19th of August, the White Star liner 
Arabic sighted and went to the rescue of a sinking ship. 
This proved to be the British steamer Dunsley, which 
had been torpedoed by a German submarine. As the 
Arabic came up and prepared to lower her boats, an- 



The Submarine and Neutrals 199 

other torpedo from the same submarine exploded against 
the liner's side, killing several of her crew and sending 
her to the bottom in eleven minutes. She went down 
within fifty miles of the resting place of the Lnsitania. 
She was sunk without warning and without cause, for 
she had been bound to New York, with neither arms nor 
ammunition on board, nor had she made the slightest at- 
tempt either to escape or attack the submarine. She 
carried one hundred and eighty-one passengers, twenty- 
five of whom were Americans. Two Americans were 
drowned. 

The German government at once asked for time in 
which to explain, and the Imperial chancellor hinted that 
the commander of the submarine that sank the Arabic 
might have " gone beyond his instructions, in w T hich case 
the Imperial government would not hesitate to give such 
complete satisfaction to the United States as would con- 
form to the friendly relations existing between both 
governments." 

Great was the rejoicing on the first of September, 
when Ambassador von Bernstorff declared himself au- 
thorized to say to the State Department that : 

" Liners will not be sunk by our submarines without 
warning and without safety of the lives of noncombat- 
ants, provided that the liners do not try to escape or 
offer resistance/' 

But only three days afterwards, the west-bound 
Canadian liner Hesperian was sunk by the explosion of 
what seemed to have been a torpedo launched without 
y .«£friing from a hostile submarine. And on top of this 
disturbing incident came the German note on the sink- 



200 The Story of the Submarine 

ing of the Arabic, the perusal of which sent a chill 
through every peace-lover in America. Affirming that 
the captain of the Arabic had tried to ram the submarine, 
the note declared that orders had been issued to com- 
manders of German submarines not to sink liners with- 
out provocation, but added that if by mistake or other- 
wise liners were sunk without provocation, Germany 
would not be responsible. 

" The German government/' it ran, " is unable to ac- 
knowledge any obligation to grant indemnity in the mat- 
ter, even if the commander should have been mistaken as 
to the aggressive intention of the Arabic. 

"If it should prove to be the case that it is impossible 
for the German and American governments to reach a 
harmonious opinion on this point, the German govern- 
ment would be prepared to submit the difference of opin- 
ion, as being a question of international law, to The 
Hague Tribunal for arbitration. . . . 

" In so doing, it assumes that, as matter of course, the 
arbitral decision shall not be admitted to have the im- 
portance of a general decision on the permissibility . . . 
under international law of German submarine warfare." 

Assuming that this extraordinary stand was based on 
a misapprehension of the facts, the United States sub- 
mitted to Germany the testimony of American passen- 
gers on the Arabic, and the sworn affidavits of her 
officers, that the submarine had not been sighted from 
the steamer and that no attempt had been made to ram 
the undersea boat or do anything but rescue the crew 
of the Dunsley. 

By this time a change had come over the spirit of the 



The Submarine and Neutrals 201 

Imperial German government. It realized that the sub- 
marine blockade of the British Isles had broken down, 
and that further examples of " Frightfulness " on the 
high seas would do Germany no good and would prob- 
ably force the United States into the ranks of Germany's 
enemies. The sensible and obvious thing to do was to 
take the easy and honorable way out the American gov- 
ernment was holding open. On October 6, Ambassador 
von Bernstorff gave out the following statement : 

" Prompted by the desire to reach a satisfactory agree- 
ment with regard to the Arabic incident, my government 
has given me the following instructions: 

" The order issued by His Majesty the Emperor to 
the commanders of the German submarines, of which I 
notified you on a previous occasion, has been made so 
stringent that the recurrence of incidents similar to the 
Arabic case is considered out of the question. 

" According to the report of Commander Schneider of 
the submarine which sank the Arabic, and his affidavit, 
as well as those of his men, Commander Schneider was 
convinced that the Arabic intended to ram the submarine. 

" On the other hand, the Imperial government does 
not doubt the good faith of the affidavit of the British 
officers of the Arabic, according to which the Arabic 
did not intend to ram the submarine. The attack of the 
submarine was undertaken against the instructions issued 
to the commander. The Imperial government regrets 
and disavows this act, and has notified Commander 
Schneider accordingly. 

" Under these circumstances, my government is pre- 
pared to pay an indemnity for American lives which, to 



202 The Story of the Submarine 

its deep regret, have been lost on the Arabic. I am au- 
thorized to negotiate with you about the amount of this 
indemnity/' 

In the meantime, fragments of the metal box of high 
explosives that had blown in the side of the Hesperian 
had been picked up on her deck, and forwarded by the 
British government to America. United States naval 
experts examined the twisted bits of metal and declared 
them to have been pieces, not of a mine, as the German 
government insists, but of an automobile torpedo. 
However, in view of the fact that the Hesperian was 
armed with a 4.7 gun, and because of the happy outcome 
of the Arabic affair, it seems unlikely that anything will 
be done about it. 

But only a month later there was begun another 
" Campaign of Frightfulness," this time by Austrian 
submarines in the Mediterranean. As the passengers on 
the Italian liner Ancona y one day out from Naples to 
New York, were sitting at luncheon on November 7th, 
they " felt a tremor through the ship as her engines 
stopped and reversed." * Then, while we were stopping, 
there was an explosion forward. A shell had struck us. 

" When I reached the deck," continues Dr. Greil, 
" shell was fairly pouring into us from the submarine, 
which we could see through the fog, about 100 yards 
away. I hurried below to pack a few things in my 
trunk. As I was standing over it, a shell came through 
the porthole and struck my maid, who was standing at 
my side. It tore away her scalp and part of her skull 

1 Statement of Dr. Cecile L. Greil, the only native-born American 
on board. 



The Submarine and Neutrals 203 

and went on through the wall, bursting somewhere in- 
side the ship. 

" When I went on deck again I found the wildest ex- 
citement. It was like the old-time stories one used to 
read of shipwrecks at sea. I will not say anything about 
the crew because I could not say anything good. They 
launched fifteen boats but only eight got away. I was 
in one of these. ... I do not believe the submarine 
fired deliberately on the lifeboats. They were trying to 
sink the Ancona with shells, but they finally used a tor- 
pedo to send her to the bottom. I looked at my watch 
when she took her last plunge. It was 12.45. We were 
picked up by the French cruiser Pluton about midnight." 

The commander of the submarine declared, in his offi- 
cial report, that he had fired only because the Ancona 
had tried to escape, that he had ceased firing as soon as 
she came to a stop, that the loss of life was due to the 
incompetence of the panic-stricken crew of the liner, 
whom the Austrian officer allowed forty-five minutes in 
which to launch the lifeboats. He admitted, however, 
that at the expiration of this time he had torpedoed and 
sunk the Ancona, while there were still a number of 
people on her decks. 

About two hundred of the passengers and crew were 
drowned or killed by shellfire. Among them were sev- 
eral American citizens. 

" The conduct of the commander," declared the 
strongly-worded American note of December 6th, " can 
only be characterized as wanton slaughter of defenseless 
non-combatants." . . . The government of the United 
States is unwilling . . .to credit the Austro-Hungarian 



204 The Story of the Submarine . 

government with an intention to permit its submarines 
to destroy the lives of helpless men, women, and chil- 
dren. It prefers to believe that the commander of the 
submarine committed this outrage without authority and 
contrary to the general or special instructions which he 
had received. 

" As the good relations of the two countries must rest 
upon a common regard for law and humanity, the gov- 
ernment of the United States cannot be expected to do 
otherwise than to denounce the sinking of the Ancona 
as an illegal and indefensible act, and to demand that the 
officer who perpetrated the deed be punished, and that 
reparation by the payment of an indemnity be made for 
the citizens of the United States who were killed or in- 
jured by the attack on the vessel." 

This undiplomatic language caused no little resentment 
in Vienna. But after a restatement of the Austrian case, 
and a much milder rejoinder from Washington, the 
American demands were apparently acceded to. In the 
second Austro-Hungarian note, which was published in 
America on January ist, 191 5, the government of the 
Dual-Monarchy disavowed the act of its submarine com- 
mander, declared that he had acted in violation of his 
orders and would be punished therefore, and agreed to 
pay an indemnity for the American citizens who had been 
killed or injured. 

" The Imperial and Royal Government," the note con- 
tinued, " agrees thoroughly with the American Cabinet 
that the sacred commandments of humanity must be ob- 
served also in war. . . . The Imperial and Royal Gov- 
ernment can also substantially concur in the principle ex- 



The Submarine and Neutrals 205 

pressed . . . that private ships, in so far as they do not 
attempt to escape or offer resistance, may not be de- 
stroyed without the persons aboard being brought into 
safety." 

Like the settlement of the Arabic case, this was hailed 
as a great diplomatic victory for the United States. 
Unlike it, there was no question of sharing the credit 
with the anti-submarine activities of the Allies, whose 
merchant ships in the Mediterranean were being tor- 
pedoed with startling frequency. On December 21st, the 
new 12,000 ton Japanese liner Yasaka Maru was sunk 
without warning, near Port Said. Thanks to the splendid 
discipline of her crew, no lives were lost. There was an 
alleged American on board, but there was some irreg- 
ularity about his citizenship papers. Nor were there any 
Americans aboard the French passenger ship Ville de la 
dot at, torpedoed on Christmas Eve, with the loss of 
seventy lives. There was nothing to mar the smug satis- 
faction of the American people on New Year's Day. 

Then came the news of the sinking of the Peninsular 
and Oriental liner Persia, on December 30th, off the 
Island of Crete. 

" I was in the dining room of the Persia at 1.05 p.m./' 
declares Mr. Charles Grant of Boston, who was one of 
the two Americans on board. " I had just finished my 
soup, and the steward was asking me what I would take 
for my second course, when a terrific explosion occurred. 

" The saloon became filled with smoke, broken glass 
and steam from the boiler, which appeared to have burst. 
There was no panic on board. We went on deck as 
though we were at drill, and reported at the lifeboats on 



206 The Story of the Submarine 

the starboard side, as the vessel had listed to port. . . . 

" The last I saw of the Persia, she had her bow in the 
air, five minutes after the explosion. ... 

" Robert McNeely, American Consul at Aden, sat at 
the same table with me on the voyage. He was not seen, 
probably because his cabin was on the port side. 

" It was a horrible scene. The water was black as ink. 
Some passengers were screaming, others were calling out 
good-by. Those in one boat sang hymns." 

The Persia was apparently torpedoed, without warn- 
ing. Like the Hesperian, she was armed with a 4.7 gun. 
One of the ship's officers saw the white wake of the 
torpedo. But no one saw the submarine. 

The commander of that submarine evidently believed, 
like Captain Sirius, in striking first and letting the law- 
yers talk about it afterwards. 



INDEX 



A-i, 124. 

As, 124, 135. 

A-5, 125. 

A-7, 124. 

A-8, 124, 126. 

Aboukir, 160, 169. 

Accidents, 124. 

Aeroplanes, 17, 71, 172. 

Air-chamber, 47. 

Alabama, 70. 

Albemarle, 43, 166. 

^/<?r*, 136. 

Alkmaar, 4. 

Alstitt's submarine, 75. 

Ancona, 202. 

Anglo-Calif ornian, 187. 

ApostolofFs submarine, 66. 

Arabic, 198, 205. 

/2r#0, 92. 

Argonaut, 85, 92, 98. 

Argonaut, Jr., 85. 

^r#w.y, 34. 

^,na, 12. 

Aube, Admiral, 59. 

Audacious, 161, 169. 

Awash condition, 127. 

£-,?, 124. 

B-u, 165. 

Badger, 168. 

Baker's submarine, 82. 

Balance-chamber, 44, 48. 

Ballast-tanks, 16, 38, 57, 82, 11 1 

138. 
Baralong case, i6j. note. 
Barber, Lieutenant F. M., 16. 
Barlow, Joel, 26, 34. 
Bates, Jr., Lindon, 194. 
" Battle of the Kegs," 23. 
Bauer, Wilhelm, 56, 65, 120, note 
Beatty, Admiral, 175. 
Beauregard, General, 39. 



Belridge, 148. 

Berwick Castle, 124. 

Bigskorth, Squadron Command- 
er, 172. 

Birmingham, 159. 

Blake, Mr., 10. 

Blockade, 177 et seq. 

"Blowing the tanks," 6^ f 112, 
122, 128. 

Booms, 92, 171. 

Borelli, 10. 

Boucher's submarine, 66. 

Bourgois, Captain, 57. 

Bourne, William, 4. 

Boush, Rear Admiral, 137. 

Bouvet, 154. 

Boyle, Robert, 7. 

British Hollands, 80. 

British Navy, 30, 70, 72, 175, 178. 

Brun, Monsieur, 57. 

Bulwark, 161. 

Buoyancy chamber, 49. 

Bushnell, David, 6, 13 to 25, 28, 
95, 128, 154. 

C-ji, 124. 

C-14, 124. 

Cable-cutting, 89, 95. 

Cairo, 144. 

Caldwell, Lieutenant H. C, 78, 79. 

Caprivi, 148. 

Carlson, Captain, 40. 
, Cerberus, 22. 

Chandler, Mr. Edward F., 53. 

Chlorin gas, 126, 129, 137. 

Clair mont, 34, 81. 

Commodore Jones, 144. 

Compass, 18, 113. 

Compensation-tank, 79, 118. 

Compressed-air tank, 30, 57, 131. 

Conning-tower, 12, 15, 28, 78, 
103, 113. 
207 



208 



Index 



Constantin's submarine, 66. 

Cooking, 108. 

Copper sheathing, 18, 35. 

Cressy, 160, 169. 

Crilley, Frank, 137. 

Cushing, Lieutenant, 43, 166. 

D-5, 155. 

Daniels, Secretary, 81, 138. 

Dardanelles, the, 64, 147, 154, 165. 

David, 36, 43, 61. 

Davis, Commander, 52. 

Day, J., 10, 128. 

Delaying-valve, 47. 

Demologos, 35. 

Depth-control, 113. 

Destroyers, 35, 104, 168, 170. 

DelUn, 124. 

Dewey, Admiral, 79, 145. 

Diable Marin, 65, 120, note. 

Diesel, Dr., 108. 

Diesel engines, 104, 135, 184. 

Divers, 14, 40, 56, 136. 

Diving-bells, 4. 

Diving compartment, 83, 88, 94, 

130, 132. 
Diving-planes, 28, 38, 48, 71, 72, 

78, in. 
Dixon, Lieutenant, 40. 
Dorothea, 32. 
Doughty, Thomas, 115. 
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 178, 

186. 
Drzewiecki, 64, 71. 
Dunsely, 198. 
Dubilier, Mr. W., 171. 

E-4, 160. 
E-5, 124. 
E-9, 156. 
E-ji, 165. 
E-13, 164. 
E-15, 165. 
Eagle, 12, 18. 
Edison battery, 126. 
Eel-boats, 4, 14. 

Electric Boat Company, 81, 96. 
Electric motors, 108, 184. 
Electric submarines, 59, 60, 66, 
83, note. 



Emerald Isle, 72. 

Emergency drop-keel, 10, 15, 83, 

128. 
Enver Pasha, 166. 
Ericsson, John, 82, 104. 
Escape from sunken submarine, 

130. 
Even-keel submergence, 61, 96. 

F-4, 124, 136. 

Falaba, 189. 

Faotomu, Lieutenant Takuma, 

128. 
Farfadet, 124. 
Farragut, Admiral, 142. 
Fenian Brotherhood, 71. 
Fenian Ram, 73. 
Fessenden oscillator, 119, 125. 
Fishing for submarines, 170, 183. 
Foca, 124. 

Folger, Commander, 82. 
Forman, Justus Miles, 194. 
Formidable, 162, 169. 
Frohman, Charles, 194. 
Fulton, 135. 
Fulton, Robert, 26 to 35, 69, 139, 

186. 

Gages, 20, 112, 129. 
Garett, Rev. Mr., 61. 
Gasoline engines, 86, 105. 
Gasoline fumes, 90, 107, 125. 
German contributions, 107, 115. 
Gimlets, i6 x 18, 64. 
Goubet submarines, 60. 
Grant, Charles, 205. 
Greased leather, 6, 9. 
Greil, Dr. Cecile L., 202. 
Giuseppe Garibaldi, 169. 
GulHight, 191. 

Guns, 83, 102, 174, 187, 202. 
Guncotton, 46. 
Gustave Zede, 59. 
Gymnote, 59. 
Gyroscope, 50, 53, 114. 
Gyroscopic compass, 113. 

Hague Tribunal, 148, 200. 
Halstead, 56. 



Index 



209 



Hammond, Jr., Mr. John Hays, 

55. 
Hanson, Captain, 183. 
Harsdoffer, 5, 6. 
Hatsuse, 147. 
Hautefeullie, Abbe de, 7. 
Hela, 155. 
Hermes, 161, 168. 
Hesperian, 199, 202, 206. 
Hogue, 160, 169. 
Holbrook, Commander, 165. 
Holland, John P., 68 to 81, 95, 

104, 115, 175. 
Holland, 76 to 81, 86, 103, 104, 

125. 
Holland No. 1, 70. 
Holland No. 2, 71. 
Holland No. 8, 76. 
Holland Torpedo-boat Company, 

75, 79, 81. 
" Horn of the Nautilus," 29. 
Housatonic, 40. 
Howard, Ensign, 36. 
Hovgaard, Commander, 75. 
Huascar, 50. 
Hubbard, Elbert, 194. 
Hundley, 38 to 41. 
Hydroplanes, 84, 95. 
Hydrostatic valve, 48, 128, 154. 

Intelligent Whale, 56, 81, 86. 
International law, 178, 179, 200. 
Irresistible, 154, 161. 

James I, 5. 

" Jammer," the, 46. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 14, 16, 22, 25. 

Jonson, Ben, 3, 64. 

if-class, 138. 
Kambala, 124. 
Kearsarge, 78. 
Kheyr-el-din, 165. 
Klein, Charles, 194. 
Krupps, the, 99. 

Labeuf, Monsieur, 91. 
Lacavalerier, Senor, 66. 
Lacomme, Dr., 64. 
Lake, Mr. Simon, 82 to 99, 175. 



Laurenti, Major Cesare, 134. 

Laurenti dock, 1^4. 

Le Son, 9. 

Lee, Ezra, 15 to 22. 

Leelanlaw, 198. 

Leon Gambetta, 169. 

Leveling-vanes, 96. 

Lifeboats, 131. 

List, Carl Frank, 187, 191. 

Lord St. Vincent, Admiral, 32. 

Lupuis, Captain, 44. 

Lusitania, 181, 192 to 198. 

Lutin, 124. 

McNeely, Robert, 206. 
Maine, 76. 
Majestic, 166. 
Makaroff, Admiral, 147. 
Malone, Mr. Dudley Field, 196. 
Marblehead, 146. 
Maryland, 137. 
Merrimac, 69. 
Mersenne, 6, 91. 
Messudieh, 165. 
Microphones, 171. 
Mines, Confederate, 143, 154, 
note. 

contact, 139, 144, 148 to 155, 
179. 

drifting, 23, 139, 154. 

electric, 89, 144, 151. 

observation, 144. 
Mine-field, 151, 165. 
Mine-planter, 146, 149. 
Mine-sweeping, 139, 152. 
Moltke, 164. 
Monitor, 42, 69, 81. 
Mother-ship, 100, in, 135. 
Mute, 35- 

Napier, John, 4. 

Napoleon, 27, 32, 33. 

Narval, 91. 

Nautilus, Fulton's, 27 to 31, 56, 

72. 
Nautilus, Jules Verne's, 59. 
Navigating bridge, 103, ill. 
Nebraskan, 195. 
Nemo, Captain, 59. 
New Ironsides, 36, 144. 



210 



Index 



New York , 78. 
Nordenfeldt, 28, 61, 74, 95. 
Nordenfeldt II, 62, 78, 83. 
Notes, American, 180, 195 to 197, 
200, 203. 

Austrian, 204. 

British, 181. 

German, 191, 199. 
No. 6, 124, 128. 

Oars, 6, 9, 16, 17, 66. 
Ocean, 154. 
Oil-engine, 60, 78, 104. 
Olympic, 162, 178. 
Orduna, 198. 
Osage, 115. 
Oxygen, 7, 131. 
Ozark, 100. 

Panlow, Captain Archibald, 187. 

Panoramas, 26. 

Payne, Lieutenant, 39. 

Pendulum, 49, 53. 

Peral, 04, 66. 

" Peripatetic Coffin," 39. 

Persia, 205. 

Persius, Captain, 183. 

Periscope, 78, 83, 114, 125, 186. 

Petropavlosk, 147. 

Philip, Captain, 146. 

Phosphorescence, 6, 19. 

Pipe-masts, 86, 95. 

Pitt, 32. 

Plongeur, 57, 132. 

Plunger, 75. 

Pluton, 203. 

Pluviose, 124, 125, 134. 

Pneumatic gun, 79. 

Pommem, 163. 

" Porpoise dive," 78, 160.. 

Porter, Admiral David, 40. 

" Primer," the, 46. 

Propellers, adjustable, 82. 

primitive, 16, 28. 

transverse, 83. 

vertical-acting, 16, 28, 61, 83, 

95 154. 
Protector, 95. 
Pumps, 16, 28, in. 



Ramillies, 35. 
Ramming, 124, 168, 200. 
Reducing-valve, 48. 
Rescuing, 125, 156. 
Resurgam, 61. 
Riou, Olivier, 59. 
Rogers, Commodore, 34. 
Rotterdam Boat, 9, 14, 69. 
Royal Edward, 166. 
Rudders, bow, 96, in. 
horizontal (see diving-planes). 

S-126, 169. 

San Francisco, 149. 

Safety-buoy, 132. 

catch, 47. 

helmets, 130. 

jackets, 130. 
Sails, 29, 31. 
Salvage docks, 134. 
Sampson, Admiral, 89, 146. 
Schneider, Commander, 201. 
Scope, Lieutenant Perry, 100. 
Searchlight, 86, 186. 
Self ridge, Rear-admiral, 115. 
Servo-motor, 49, 53. 
Sirius, Captain John, 177, 187, 

189, 206. 
Skerrett, Mr. R. G., 135. 
Spuyten Duyvil, 42. 
Stahl, Gustav, 196. 
" Staple of News, the," 3. 
Steam submarine, 61. 
Steamboat, 32, 34. 
Storage-batteries, 59, 126, 184. 
" Striker/' the, 46. 
Stromboli, 42. 
Submarine fighting submarine, 

174. 
Submarine railroad, 64. 
Submersible, 91. 
Superstructure, 90, 102. 
Symons's submarine, 9. 

Taylor, D. W., Chief Construc- 
tor, U. S. N., 96. 

Telephoning from submarines, 
88, 132. 

Tecumseh, 142. 

Templo, Alvary, 71. 



Index 



211 



Texas, 146. 

Thrasher, Leon C, 190. 
Tinkling Cloud, 195. 
Tissot, Professor, 171. 
Torpedo, automobile, 44 to 55. 

boats, 45, 103. 

Brennan, 59. 

Chandler, 53. 

controllable, 43, 54, 55. 

cost of, 47, 103. 

Davis gun-, 52. 

Fulton's anchored, 139. 

Hammond wireless, 55. 
Torpedo-nets, 34, 170. 

origin of name, 29. 

practice, 116. 

recovering, 47, 123. 

Schwartzkopf, 52, 160. 

Sims-Edison, 54. 

spar, 37, 43. 

tubes, 45, 46, 63, 117, 118, 133, 
138. 

wake of, 49, 206. 
" Torpedo War and Submarine 

Explosions," 35, 139. 
Torpedo, Whitehead, 44 to 52, 

117. 
Transports, 166, 171, 178. 
Trim, 96. 

Trimming-tanks, 117. 
Trinitrotuluol, 52. 
Triumph, 166. 
Trumbull, Governor, 14. 
Turner, Captain, 193. 
Turtle, 12, 14 to 22. 

U-i, 108. 
U-3, 124, 132. 
U-9, 160. 
U-I2, 169. 



U-15, 159. 

U-j6, 183. 

U-28, 189. 

U-29, 191. 

U-39, 187, note. 

U-51, 166. 

Vanderbilt, Alfred, 194. 

Vand der Wonde, Cornelius, 6. 

Van Drebel, Cornelius, 4 to 9, 41. 

Vendemiaire, 124. 

Vereshchagin, 147. 

Vickers Sons & Maxim, 80. 

Ville de la dot at, 205. 

Von Weddigen, Lieutenant-com- 
mander, 18, 160, 191. 

Von Bernstorff, Ambassador, 
199. 

Von Tirpitz, Admiral, 69, 177, 
187, 189. 

Vulcan, 132. 

Waddington, Mr. J. F., 83, note. 
War-head, 47, 52. 
War Zone,. 30, 179. 
Washington, George, 13, 17, 25. 
Wheeled 'submarines, 84. 
White mice, 13, no. 
Whitehead, Mr., 44. 
Whitney, Secretary, 74. 
Wilson, President, 180, 197, 198. 
Wright brothers, 71. 

X-4, 102 to 123. 

Yasaka Maru, 205. 
Yenisei, 146. 

Zeppelins, 172. 



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